Ricky Allman, Sandra Bermudez, Carla Gannis, Deana Lawson, Yeni Mao, Cara Phillips, Pierre St. Jacques, Ginna Triplett

chashama is pleased to present DESIRES, curated by Robert Curcio of curcioprojects and featuring an eccelectic group of artists playing with the viewer’s expectations and anticipations of what desire could be.

Ricky Allman mixes the desire of religious fundamentalist for an apocalyptic utopia with a mystical landscape and demanding architecture all from his childhood in Utah. As a child he expected the end of the world at any minute, but now creates profound spiritual experiences giving image to his secret yearning to see and experience cataclysmic changes in nature and in the social consciousness.

Ricky Allman: Feeler Redux, 2008 acryllic and ink on panel It’s all about the bling in Sandra Bermudez’s Tiffany ring collection. Except these are counterfeit rings purchased off the street. An interesting twist of desire, a fake substitute for high-end luxury is transformed into a desirable real high-end luxury commodity – art Sandra Bermudez: Tiffany’s; 2006; silver, and solder mounted on board; edition 2/3; 5×3 x5

Carla Gannis’ Jezebel series combines the old-testament queen with Bette Davis as she stared in the 1938 movie. The climax of the movie is when Davis goes to the society ball, not in the traditional virginal white gown, but in a shockingly bright red dress. Home wrecker, femme fatale, hoochie, video vixen or Jezebel, it doesn’t matter what she is called; female sexual power in the past was driven down but now is desired.

Carla Gannis: Jezebel (Bette), archival digital pigment print, 30”x26” Deana Lawson’s work is grounded in the rituals of lived experience and portrays family and friends in her hometown of Rochester, NY. Ashanti has subtle psychological nuances and presents new representations of the black female that are more complex than what is represented in Deana Lawson: Ashanti, pigment print, 40”x50”

Looking at Yeni Mao’s stack of golden bananas in the sculpture. Adventures on the Golden Mountain, puts a salacious smirk on your face as you think of all the sexual innuendo. However, Mao’s sculpture is actually about the desire of Chinese immigrants coming to America who called California the Golden Mountain, a sly reference to banana republics and a mischievous homage to Andy Warhol.

Yeni Mao: Adventure on the Golden Moutain, 2009, fools gold leaf on foam, dimensions variable. The opulent rooms of Cara Phillips photographs from her Singular Beauty series appear to be the contemporary equivalent of Versailles, which they are. These are the consultation rooms and the before/after photography booths of cosmetic surgeons. The rooms are the ultra sleek and hyper cool temples of the ultimate consumer lifestyle’s desire for the young and the new.

Cara Phillips: White Consultation Chair, Upper East Side, 2006, digital-C Pierre St. Jacques video Project for a Grey Dress in New York is loosely based on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel “Project for a Revolution in New York”. St. Jacques’s video depicts a woman in her apartment who is getting ready to go out. Soon a man comes up the stairs, presumably to meet her but this is not certain. The viewer creates additional levels of desire watching the story evolve as they construct expectations that are as much part of the story as the main narrative thread is. Pierre St. Jacques: Projects for a Grey Dress in New York, 2005, running What does a woman desire to be in today’s society? Ginna Triplett goes through her daily routine as a young woman, mother and artist, bombarded with images of sexy swimsuit models and pristine cartoon princesses? Does she want to be Wonder Woman and do/have it all or the happy carefree life of a little mermaid?