Crowds poured into a sweltering Freeman Alley yesterday evening to attend the opening of Marilyn Minter’s Green Pink Caviar at Salon 94 Freemans. On show were seven new works by the artist that formulate a juxtaposition between photorealistic paintings and painterly photographs. In “her examination of glamour and its underbelly,” Minter’s work operates on the verge between clearness and abstraction, and situates itself ambiguously between the appalling and the beautiful. Minter appropriates the body as a site to play out these dualities. For example, in Snake Charmer (2009), a nipple with a tattooed snake protrudes from an enamel surface. Throughout the exhibition, the tongue and other erotic zones, such as the lips and fingers, boldly enter the viewer’s space. Green Pink Caviar will run through June 13th, 2009.

Marilyn Minter: Green Pink Caviar
Salon 94 Freemans
1 Freeman Alley
April 28, 2009 – June 13, 2009

RELATED LINKS

Exhibition Page [Salon 94]
Marilyn Minter: It’s About Mainting the Integrity of Ideas [Two Coats of Paint]
CHEWING COLOR, curated by Marilyn Minter [Creative Time]
A Mouthful of Marilyn Minter [WMagazine]
Marilyn Minter – Green Pink Caviar [Green Pink Caviar]
Marilyn Minter by Johanna Burton [Amazon]
What Does Goo Mean To You? [New York Magazine]

In a number of the works in the exhibition, for example in Pop Rocks (2009), Minter also uses the tongue and fingers as tools. Minter had models lick colored candy on a plate of glass and then photographed the model from the other side of the glass plate. The tongue blended in the color of the candy with saliva and spread it all over the surface of the plate. Minter further extends the use of the body as a tool in her finger application of a glossy finish. In Minter’s words: “I started softening the enamel with my fingers because you couldn’t do it with brushes. If you look close, all the paintings are covered in fingerprints.”

Although Green Pink Caviar consists of only paintings and photography, Minter’s oeuvre covers a wide range of objects and by doing so, she blurs the division between high art and commercial objects. Moreover, she channels her work through different media, such as billboards, television commercials and fashion photography. Recently, Minter has also entered the realm of video art. Minter curated a video project for Creative Time, titled CHEWING COLOR, that will be shown on the MTV HD Screen on Times Square.  One of the videos in the project, directed by Minter herself and similarly titled Green Pink Caviar, also serves as a trailer to midnight films at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street in New York.

Marilyn Minter was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1948. In 1970, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Florida and two years later, she received a Master of Fine Art from Syracuse University. Over the past two decades, she was given several grants and awards, and her work has been included in numerous exhibitions in the United States and Europe. A solo exhibition around her work was organized at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005 and another solo exhibition is planned at the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinatti in September this year. In addition, her pieces are part of numerous public collections. Last year, Johanna Burton published Marilyn Minter, a book on Minter’s oeuvre. Currently, Minter lives and works in New York.

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