curated by Manon Slome

Background: In the wake of Madrid’s fashion week controversial ban on underweight models, an the recent publicized death from anorexia of a Latin American model, the fashion industry and the media went into a short lived frenzy of self reflection asking, what is too thin? The proposed ban drew support from only two other countries – Israel and India – while it was flatly rejected by the major world fashion capitals of Paris, London and New York. In a climate where whoever is thinner gets the job, the pressure to be thin is enormous and as these are the women and girls who are relentlessly photographed, they become style role models for a population fascinated by celebrity.

In the quest to emulate this fiction of desirability, the journey from manipulation of images to the “doctoring” and manipulation of the self seems increasingly short. More money is spent in this country on cosmetics than on education and social services combined, while close to two million cosmetic surgery procedures were performed last year in the United States. Anorexia and self-mutilation are rampant. Girls, women and increasingly men alike, compare themselves to the air brushed “beauties” and feel that everything about themselves is wrong.

The exhibition, Dangerous Beauty, investigates and challenges society’s ideal of beauty and the designer body created and supported by mass consumerism. Many of the artists selected capture the anxiety of this beauty -centered society and raise questions on the human impact of living in the glare of images that, without manipulation, may have no human incarnation. The exhibition aims to raise questions about the mass ideology of beauty and explore the connections between beauty and violence, the phobia of aging, issues of self-perception and the element of power inherent in an “ideal.”

The exhibition will be composed of a selection of work in a variety of media (painting, sculpture, photography, installation and video) chosen to reflect a response to “dangerous beauty”, this area where the beauty myth collides with reality. The works selected examine the phenomena and implications of the current dictates of beauty and identity, contest the values and apparatus of the times and raise the question as to whether there is a place for the subjective and the individual in a society of mass expression. Artists in the exhibition include:

Nelly Agassi Beth B Nicola Costantino Jacob Dahlgren Davis & Davis E V Day Martin C De Waal Daniella Dooling Ruud Van Empel Sylvie Fleury Lauren Greenfield Margi Geerlinks Kirsten Geisler Micha Klein Paul Knight Barbara Kruger Rachel Lachowicz Assi Meshullam Marilyn Minter Joshua Neustein Erwin Olaf Orlan Patricia Piccinini Tom Sanford Gae Savannah Joan Semmel Joseph Stashkevetch