Viewing Carol Bove's work is a venture in translucency. She presents a complex, decorous model that is as approachable as it is nebulous.
Carefully formal, Bove reveals the vulnerability of the glossy contexts she creates, paying keen attention to the display of the organic found and reapportioned object. Feathers on linen, steel lattice on plastic, and iridescent shells held aloft by crooked steel fingers each offer succinct, almost brutal duality. Bove affects scale and perspective by presenting multiple sizes of comparable mesmerizing objects, like the large driftwood specimen harnessed to the wall and the diminutive shred dangling to its immediate left.
Balance and materiality are thoroughly poeticized. Objects (sculptural components) can be read directly, isolated to the right degrees or held in suspended animation, but they are also subject to their whimsically stylized platforms. The work is an invitation to assess the almost inexplicable, phenomenological artifice in nature, the enigmatic curve of a shiny shell, the infinitely porous eaten tree, and the showy peacock tailfeather. These objects, which are beautiful and functional in nature, are reduced to a state of mere beauty in the cube. Placed alongside delicate jewelry, they seek to gauge such theatricality, carnal and otherwise, akin to the tactical propmaking of Marcel Broodthaers.
The works avoid the idea of a true, definitive center physically and emotively by highlighting the framework and setting natural ‘wonders’ to new order. They call to mind the supposed sentiments of Hieronymous Bosch, melding possible religious (via mysticism) and secular reads and playing with standardized “traditional” display tactics.
Faux gold pedestals lift coral chunks, thin necklace strands hang in delicate swathes (nets) patterned from above. All are shimmed into place like so many damaged, cruise ship retail souvenir stanchions on the uneven Kimmerich floor. The uncandid “daintiness” feels almost sarcastic, especially when offset by weighty plexiglass and steel fence portals, entitled “Harlequin”. These thick and rigid structures create a double lattice visual trick, allowing perceptual phenomenon to become central and viable as an artistic tool, an illusionary lesson learned of Op Art. It is difficult not to consider the endless evolutionary strains behind the decoration at hand, both in the realm of conceptual art and in that of Darwin.
In essence, everything visible here is dead. The remains may reflect their absurd show and role in life, but they has been plucked, mined, and henceforth domesticated before being transported and rearranged in the SOHO space. The artist seems to be trying her hand at affecting objects by softly classifying them. Decay is made new.
These are thoughtful objects of fetish that can challenge or gratify. With moves more classy than those of blunt arrangers like Rachel Harrison, you may feel equal love and sardonicism from the enigmatic works at hand.
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