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Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll /
Day 27 / Day 1 (New in Box),
Fuji Matte print (177.8
� 133.4 cm), Edition of 5
Courtesy of Wilkinson Gallery,
London
LAURIE
SIMMONS
THE LOVE DOLL: DAYS 1 � 30
EARLY BLACK AND
WHITE INTERIORS
9 June
to 10 July 2011
Wilkinson Gallery is pleased to
present its first solo exhibition with the acclaimed New
York-based artist Laurie Simmons. This will also be the
artist�s first solo exhibition in London. Over the last 30
years Simmons has garnered a significant reputation
internationally as one of the leading artists to emerge from
the New York �Pictures Generation� during the 1970�s and
80�s.
Laurie Simmons moved to New York in 1973, with her
close friend and photographer Jimmy De Sana. The two artists
converted an old sweatshop in Soho into their studio and
living space. Together the pair set up Laurie�s first
darkroom, and under De Sana�s tutelage, Simmons came to
understand, with a far greater awareness, the intricacies of
the camera and the complexities of production techniques. From
1975, Laurie began to photograph her dolls in these evocative
nourish black-and-white scenarios. Whilst the resultant images
were beautifully intricate alter-realities, the artist was
amazed by their apparent realism � �I actually believed that
the rooms I was shooting could be mistaken for real places�.
Simmons was immediately struck by the camera�s propensity to
lie � and indeed the role images constitute in our own
construction as subjects � whether it be as sons, daughters,
family members or citizens.
In
the Lower Gallery Simmons presents one of her earliest series,
Early Black and White Interiors (1976-78). This
series staged these now iconic miniature spaces, using
dollhouse furniture and other seemingly banal props, to
conjure a pseudo reality. The domestic objects and dated
wallpaper, much of which she found in an old general store in
upstate New York, were relics of a domesticity that came to
define the previous generation, not the countercultural
movement to which Simmons and her New York set belonged.
Simmons had lived as a self-identified hippie for much of her
young adult life. Communal living of this nature - that
typified many young peoples experience of the 1970�s - was
intended to erase the authoritarian structure of the nuclear
family and the parochial idealism of suburbia. There was a
critical move among Simmons, and other emerging artists of the
period, to deconstruct and question the domestic and social
formalism that symbolized 1950�s suburban America and indeed
Laurie�s own youth. It was a narrative visible in the work of
other key artists of the time like Barbara Kruger, Richard
Prince, Martha Rosler and Cindy Sherman. However, Laurie�s
exploration of these subjects was totally unique. Her
manipulation of miniaturised objects, dolls and interiors
provided these domestic Mise-en-scenes with a dream like
quality, which isolated the images from the austere
�Pseudo-Documentary� aesthetic other artists were trying to
achieve. There is a an undeniable reference to memory and
youth in these images, specifically the childhood associated
with 1950�s popular culture � from the use of the artist�s own
toys, to the evocation of editorial pages from Life and Look
magazines or family-oriented situation comedies like Father
Knows Best . Although these images enter a line of questioning
that came to define much artistic output from New York during
the late 1970�s � they are uniquely tinged with a poignant
sense of nostalgia, but with an equally disquieting sense of
dislocation.
In
the Upper Gallery Simmons presents six new works from her most
recent series, The Love Doll: Days 1 � 30 (2009-11).
In the fall of 2009, the artist ordered a customized, high-end
love doll from Japan. The doll, designed as a surrogate sex
partner, arrived in a crate, clothed in a transparent slip and
accompanied by a separate box containing an engagement ring
and female genitalia. Simmons began to document her
photographic relationship with this human scale �girl�. The
resulting photographs depict the lifelike, latex doll in an
ongoing series of �actions�, shown and titled chronologically
from the day Simmons received the doll, through to the
present. The photos reveal the relationship the artist
develops with her model. The first days depict a somewhat
formal and shy series of poses with an ever-increasing
familiarity and comfort level unveiled as time passes. A
second doll arrived one year later. This new character, and
the interaction between the two, reveal yet another dynamic in
composition - both formally and psychologically.
In
search of a stage for her Love Doll, Simmons turned to a human
scale home, transforming it into an artfully staged, color
coordinated, oversized dollhouse. The Love Doll
series is not only a reminder of Simmons� past examinations of
the dollhouse, but also engages with adult fantasies and
fetishes, infused with an even more potent sense of desire and
regret.
Laurie Simmons was born in Long
Island, New York (1949) and lives and works in New York City.
She received a BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia
in 1971. Important retrospective museum exhibitions include
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland (1997) and San Jose
Museum of Art, San Jose, California (1990). Her work can also
be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of
American Art, The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum of Art, The
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Corcoran
Gallery of Art in Washington DC; the Hara Museum in Tokyo; and
the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, amongst others. Recent survey
exhibitions include �Pictures by Women: A History of Modern
Photography�, MOMA, New York (2011); �Off The Wall: Part 1 �
30 Performative Actions�, Whitney museum of American Art, New
York (2010) and �The Pictures Generation, 1974 � 1984�, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2009). In 2006 the
artist directed her first feature length film �The Music of
Regret� which was premiered globally at MOMA, New York and
Tate Modern, London (2006). She received a Guggenheim
Foundation Fellowship in 1997 and a National Endowment for the
Arts Fellowship in 1984. Simmons was also the recipient of the
2005 �Roy Lichtenstein Residency in Visual Arts,� at The
American Academy in Rome. In 2010 Simmons co-starred in �Tiny
Furniture�, a feature film written and directed by the
artist�s daughter Lena Dunham. The film�s plot focuses on the
trials and tribulations of 22-year-old Aura, modeled on and
played by Lena herself, Laurie plays the role of Siri, the
artist mother loosely based on her. The film was the winner of
the 2010 South By Southwest Narrative Feature Film
Award.
At
this years Art Basel | 42 Wilkinson Gallery will exhibit a
unique installation of work by Laurie Simmons and Jimmy De
Sana, exploring the two artist�s dialogue between
1973-1990.
WILKINSON GALLERY
50-58
Vyner Street
London E2 9DQ
T: +44 (0) 20 8980
2662
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