Klein has transformed
the warehouse gallery at Seattle's Consolidated Works into a regal
yet fantastically playful campsite. The works are line drawings realized
in large-scale three-dimensionality. Stand is a 14' tall fortress
made of interlocking black spandex pant forms. This piece is dignified
but escapes Richard Serra-like austerity though the tenuous and slightly
silly interaction of having to walk between the pant legs to enter
into the center. Three luminous warm-toned tents, Float Zone 1,
2, and 3, hang from the ceiling at the center of the exhibition
reflecting the strong negative space in Stand. Although womb-like
and gentle there is a potent juxtaposition to the feminine in the
macho fabric choice of nylon football jersey. xxchip is a graceful
wedge that rocks from side to side on a curved aluminum frame covered
in suntan-toned pantyhose nylon. It is unsettling, and intimate in
spite of it's mammoth size. Mousehole tips the frame of xxchip
on it's side and covers the frame with
silver ruffles inviting viewers to enter into a well defined proscenium.
Finally a series of five space-age sleeping bags create a floor pattern
at the back of the space that jars the exhibition with random placement
in the midst of precisely positioned pieces.
In the 1980's
and the early 1990's Sheila decided to dress the world, and proceeded
to do so in gallery exhibitions and public works across the country.
A giant necklace of blinking streetlights, presented as a wedding
gift to the Statue of Liberty, was positioned outside Caesar's Palace
in Las Vegas as part of Antoni Miralda's well publicized project in
which he married the Statue of Liberty to a statue in Barcelona of
Christopher Columbus. Commemorative Ground Ring was commissioned by
Sculpture Chicago in 1989 and incorporated familiar architectural
elements from the city's urban landscape as part of the "gemstone".
The whole notion of architectural jewelry applies a humanistic and
primarily feminine trait to the urban landscape and defies herself
as a crusader against the banality and homogenization and the resulting
works as "femmetech: "Kind of like fixing an engine with
a hairpin."
For the last eight
years Sheila has been designing the Hollywood/Highland Metro Station,
near Graumman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles with the architecture
firm Dworsky Associates. Sheila named the station Underground Girl.
Subway trains float down long, round-ribbed tubes, letting passengers
out in a concrete and metal womb. Fleshy pink light fixtures cast
soft pools on the ceiling, and repetitive architectural elements step
in curved motion down the platform. The station is not a box that's
been dressed. Underground Girl was designed from the beginning,
(with architects known for creating conservative, corporate structures
no less) to offer passengers the experience of metamorphosis, entering
a cocoon-like structure before rising to the city.
Consolidated Works'
exhibition, like Underground Girl, involved an opportunity
for viewers to not only observe the works, but also to literally crawl
inside of them, activating the participation. Within the yellow folds
of Float Zone #3 my meditative state is broken by squeals and
giggles coming from the maroon interior of Float Zone #2. Sheila
would be pleased to know that the breadth of her accomplishments in
the art, architecture and design communities, and twenty-five years
of cumulative effort has resulted in simple responses of joy.
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