“Don’t Expect Anything”

The title of this exhibition sounds like an order, commanding the viewer not to expect anything. From whom? From what? Nevertheless, this is a group show of great depth and crowded with ideas. Nina Beier and Marie Lund’s The House and the Backdoor, 2007, attests to the accidental nature of situations: A wooden box resting on a pedestal contains books that Beier’s mother discovered to be identical to those in the library of her husband when she moved in with him. The work is presented as a fragment of a library, in which the titles remain secret, as the volumes are positioned backward, hiding their spines. Chance in everyday situations is perhaps also the mystery that hides behind the starry skies in Lisa Oppenheim’s 100 Photographs That Changed the World, 2007, which captures twinkling stars and is related to one hundred events, as depicted in Time-Life books, that changed the world for better or worse. The works of Karla Black might seem like sculptural accidents. Molded from plastic, body lotion, cotton, plaster, paint, eggs and Vaseline, they bring to mind a range of references––from psychoanalysis to feminism, Abstract Expressionism to Viennese Actionism. Lorna Macintyre makes references to Symbolism instead; she creates elegant and visionary pedestals with mysterious forms, stripped of their primary function and perhaps waiting to be transformed by alchemical procedures. Rosalind Nashashibi’s 16-mm film Eyeballing, 2005, in which roles and messages are exchanged, plays with the contrast between reality and imagination and adds to the formal lightness of this group show. One would not expect such a lightness to emerge from the tough and heavy creative research of her work, as well as the art made by the other eleven women in this show, but it comes as a welcome surprise.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.