Lot 418: Rachel Lachowicz (b. 1964)

Untitled (lipstick urinals) three elements--lipstick, wax and hyrocal each: 15 x 9 x 6 in. (38.1 x 22.8 x 15.2 cm.) Executed in 1992. This work is from an edition five plus one artist's proof. PROVENANCE Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica EXHIBITION University of California at Los Angeles, Wright Art Gallery, Bad Girls West, January-March 1992, p. 122 Newport Harbor Museum, New California Art: Rachel Lachowicz, October-November 1992, no.2 (illustrated; another example exhibited) NOTES "Literal-even blunt- and humorous, Rachel Lachowicz's sculptures are most easily undestood for their didactic content, seen as feminist parodies of past movements, especially 1960s Minimalist or Minimalist-derived works. Her art critique, however, has implications for society at large-for Lachowicz, the political is always personal. She looks as carefully at her own role in social relationships as she does at that of men who are often seen as opressors. An erotic charge in much of her work admits to an attraction to as well as a repulsion from the styles she appropriates. There is a fascination with power: the objectification of women by men, and vice versa, Lachowicz implies, may be inherent in sexuality. Sensual in the extreme, infused with desire and memory, these works are as seductive as they are satirical" (L. Zelevansky, Sense and Sensibility: Women Artists and Minimalism in the Ninties, p. 18). Lipstick Urinals superimposes Lachowicz's own sensuous corporeal mouth forms reference over the male precedents of Duchamp's and Gober's urinal forms, producing a feminist statements which transforms male dominated culture rather than competing with it.