Journal and Courier, IN, USA

'Does Gender Still Matter?' crosses usual boundaries

By TIM BROUK
tbrouk@journalandcourier.com

October 21, 2007

If the latest exhibition in Purdue Memorial Union's Robert Ringel
Gallery was a rock band, it would be the New York Dolls.

Like the influential 1970s glam rock band, "Does Gender Still Matter?"
is bold, a little brash and cutting edge just like the Dolls were.
"Does Gender Still Matter?" has work that crosses normal gender
boundaries in a light and humorous way and in serious and unnerving
ways. The show is full of contradictions, just like the Dolls were
with their quite masculine, heterosexual personalities and tough rock
'n' roll underneath pounds of make-up and women's clothes.

"Does Gender Still Matter" opens Monday and runs through Dec. 2. The
show was created by Purdue Galleries director Craig Martin and
Elizabeth Mix, an assistant professor in art history at Butler
University. A worldwide call-out for work that relates to gender
issues was made, and Martin and Mix received about 400 submissions
from all over the United States and as far away as Australia. The best
seven were carefully selected.

"We were looking for works that were fresh," said Mix, who was an
assistant professor in art history at Purdue University. "We didn't
want tired old representations of general versions of feminism like in
the '60s and '70s, now we have transgender, androgyny and
homosexuality issues to work with."

Through coincidence, the seven artists are all from New England and
the East Coast. Call-outs were made on multiple Web sites including
www.artdeadline.com.

Many of the pieces are striking. There's the mesmerizing portrait
photography of transgender people by New York City's Mariette
Pathy Allen and the bold video by David Politzer of Syracuse, N.Y. His
Change Your Body/Change Your Mind looks at body issues often
associated with females but from a male perspective.

Christina Pitsch played with the masculinity of objects, including
deer antlers and trucks, in her three pieces in the show. In Trophy
Suite, multiple antler trophies are embellished in silver in a tough,
metallic tone -- save the dozens of rose buds and pretty bows that are
subtly attached to the trophies. Five has the antler trophy theme but
the cast plastic pieces are coated in a pink flocking in front of
large, lacy doilies.

"Flocking reminds me of those little plastic flocked Easter bunnies.
It's nylon fiber sprayed on an enamel paint base," Pitsch stated.
"It's fuzzy and soft-feeling."

Flocking was added to Present, a piece featuring three small porcelain
trucks that spin around as though it was on stage at a car show.
Pitsch said she was thinking of wedding cakes and beauty contests
while designing the show.

"I enjoy tweaking gender in my work," Pitsch said. "I'm taking hunting
and truck culture and emasculating them and feminizing them. Maybe it
was from growing up as a tomboy and people asking me 'Why don't you
wear a skirt?' ... Thematically, the title of this show is the crux of
my work."

Chung "Fanky" Chak submitted four digital images of his "Dude! It's
Superman!" 10-part series. Chak's work is striking, witty and daring.
Chak said he combined pictures from street scenes in Hong Kong with
images he shot in his studio. Through Photoshop, he has Superman,
Superwoman and Robin figures joining the people walking on the busy
sidewalks and streets. In the mix is "Dude," a nude male that blends
in some images but is in the forefront in others. Chak said he wanted
to combine traditional and new gender issues in this series and the
first thing he thought of was using comic book superheroes. "Dude" is
there to flip the idea of the female figure being the most common in
photography. Superman dominates most of the images. Robin was thrown
in because of the joke that Batman and Robin are gay, Chak said.

Lauren O'Neal's large digital photographs of clothing in extreme
close-up shots allow for gender confusion because of the framing and
that the clothing was put on androgenous wooden models. The clothing
is business attire but it is difficult to tell in some if the clothes
would be worn by a man or a woman. Baltimore's Elizabeth Crisman
produced several life-sized photos of a nude male and nude female. She
cut them up and stitched the pieces together with black thread for
Untitled 1 and 2.

Also, Andrew Wodzianski paints, draws and finds images of women's legs
and attaches them to motorcycles, race cars and monsters in his work
in "Gender."

Mix sees all of the work as "authentic" and she believes it will make
people think and illicit many reactions.

"I think people will be talking about it," Mix said.