Unrefined Verbiage
Artists: Mary Reid Kelley & Patrick Kelley
Absurdity, bizarreness, feminism. Mary Reid Kelley combines painting, performance, and her distinctive wordplay-rich poetry in polemical, graphically stylized videos. Mary and Patrick use the historical events and contemporary popular culture further investigates the utility of language and aesthetic imitation. This exhibition consists of two parts: paintings and behavioral images. The artist's works mainly focus on the terrorist feminism of gender inequality and reveal the historical and social differences in gender perception and how it affects judgment.
Compared with painting, I think their performance video works are more attractive and more intuitive to express their information. Rand/Goop is a 6 channel video installation of floating heads in individual wooden boxes, it catches my eye first when I walked into the gallery. I saw that when multiple characters emphasize speaking at the same time, the chorus sound of the voice will swell. Six characters are included in the simplified representation of television. The audience keeps receiving the information from six roles, each of which is a criticism of society. Each character is a criticism of society. The most refreshing point is that each character's facial features use her iconic clothing and makeup technology to draw our attention to each character's speech. The Rape of Europa is inspired by Titian’s painting of mythology, but also a response. This is about the story of Europa, a woman played by an artist. She tells her experience of being raped. Her indifference was interrupted by footage of Mary reed playing different female roles that have played an important role in history. Europa's experience and rhyming narration of the story touch on the cruelty of the discrimination against female sexual behavior. The role development of artists does provide insights into the rape experience related to the history of women's status in society. Through poetic means and clothing, artists provide comic relief, which is a tool to help understand heated topics. This is not just a simple feminist subversion of the violent story of the birth of civilization. On the contrary, the artist's Europa rape describes Europa as a semi-conscious victim of incredible violence and also criticizes the contemporary concept of the agency itself. After the understanding from their video world they have created, then back to painting, which can support their main idea very well. Also, each female characters have a very rich facial expression. People pay attention to the problem of feminism and treat it with the stereotyped attitude of women, which once again reveals the idea of how the social structure affects the concept of gender.
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