Carol Caroompas’ recent installation, entitled Fairy Tales, 1989, is a busy and wild amalgamation of heterosexual imagery produced in the classic post-Modern tradition of harmoniously combative renderings. Here we have fake Aztec markings, stick figures, cartoon graphics, and exquisitely rendered anatomical drawings of heads. The effect is elemental, intriguing, and nightmarish. Caroompas’ paintings are like sexual morality plays. Practically every piece has either a vagina or a penis in it; sometimes she uses metaphorical stand-ins (spiders, cherries, narrow bodies of water, versus enormous tulips, burning airplanes, mountains, etc.), but mainly it’s the real McCoy. There are also lots of inserts of male and female figures intertwined.
This representation of sex is unusual because the characters fuck so thoughtfully, with such sincerity and compassion; the sex is not faked and theatrical, but filled with abandon and tenderness. These little scenes both blend into the overall life of the paintings and call attention to themselves, as sex often does. The works as a whole are intimate and plead for recognition, as well as explicit understanding. They have a stark, bathroom reality to them; they won’t let a viewer get away with a moderate reading.
Caroompas paints with an immediate, slightly crude hand that illustrates the paintings’ power and vulnerability. The works blare with gaudy reds, yellows, greens and oranges; they practically burst the constraints of the frame. They confront directly the cultural debris that makes women feel they must be innocent, happy, and ready, and men that they must be strong, silent, and brilliant. These excessively literal paintings underscore the fact that such social pressures are huge and vulgar and persistent.
A counterpoint to the paintings are Caroompas’ small, white, pencil drawings on black paper The majority of them feature a single image with a rendering of a precious ribbon encircling or incarcerating the scene. The phrase “KNOW THE MEANING OF” is written over each picture. Here the renderings are identical in style: simple and elegant. The content fluctuates from the nostalgic to the extreme—a woman sorting eggs; a military wedding ceremony; an erect penis; and what looks at first like a shy aardvark but which is actually a very hairy, freestanding vagina. The works’ tiny size and discreet lack of coloring bring the viewer’s face up close for another punch.
The art world welcomes bad boys. It encourages them to burp up, to smear and scream any human or inhuman utterance. But this same excitable sect doesn’t know what to do with bad girls. A few token renegades are accepted as a way to spice up the scene, but most are seen as aberrations. Caroompas is one of a growing number of bad girls. Her work is angry, baudy, and chaotic. It’s determined to return the long-lost stink to our wooden lives.
—Benjamin Weissman
