photo by Andreas Hofweber
iphoto by Thera Marshall
03.31.12
Installation :: 7pm-3am
Performance :: 8-9pm
Essential [erotica] // group art show
Lena Marquise is a performance artist who focuses on art direction, and works within installations, adding an element of static sculpture – she conveys static tension with her choice of position and blocking, as well as the position the audience is placed within; despite being outside of the conventional context of the installation. In concept as well as in practice, Marquise focuses on the duality of creating works as the voyeur, as well as the exhibitionist.
In “Touch but dont feel.” Marquise invites the audience to be present as voyeurs, and invites them to mentally enter the scene as spectators who fill the empty chair before her.
The rope she is bound by and pulling against shows constant restraint, gag, conveying censorship and constriction of verbally expressing emotions and sexuality. The chair, ever present in the artists work, now takes on an aggressive role, as not only her absent keeper, but also as an introspective on the recent trend to use chairs in sculptural works, as prevalent at the Armory Show 2012. It is the belief of the artist and her contemporaries that emerging trends stifle the artist.
A tangible portion of the installation is the illuminated words cut into a sheet of black plexiglass “LOOK BUT DONT TOUCH // Touch but dont feel.”, which conveys the artist’s implicit and explicit relationships, those between physicality of emotion, and how the latter applies to the former. The graphics which are attached to the title as a means of solidifying intellectual property, calls to mind the stern warning of a mother to “Look with your eyes, not with your hands!”, in contrast to the following which may have been the wispy words in a faint memory of a whore you loved in Amsterdam, whispering with stale cigarette breath, into your ear.
