Genesis Belanger: Through the Eye of a Needle
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum • Ridgefield, CT • thealdrich.org • Through May 2, 2021
Genesis Belanger knocks it out of the park in Through the Eye of a Needle, her first solo museum exhibition and largest installation to date. Her background in stylizing props and sets for the fashion and advertising industries comes to the fore in the fine art realm with a show that delights as it disturbs. Belanger creates everyday objects made out of porcelain, stoneware, and upholstery, staged in two galleries with an implied, disquieting open-ended narrative. In the ante chamber, a sofa flanked by two potted plants holds a purse with its contents spilling out. Was it hurriedly abandoned? Deflated balloons tied to the plants suggest a celebration took place not too long ago. A nearby side table has a push-button phone off its hook, a bejeweled manicured hand dropped next to it: did it die with the conversation?
Past a dripping faucet and foot on the floor (an implied cleansing ritual?), the exhibit continues on to a larger room, which at first glance seems like a montage of domesticity. Oversized goods befitting a dollhouse, benign in their soft pastel colors, are displayed on furniture throughout the room. Belanger works in porcelain and earthenware and finishes the objects to make them appear as if they are made out of stone, with a uniform, unglazed, matte finish. The result is a deadpan delivery, one with aplomb. A banquet table filled with fruits, vegetables, meats, and desserts; a mantle, piano, side table, ottoman, two side chairs decorated with candelabras, bowls of fruit, and flower vases. But something is amiss. In the mix are body parts, ears, mouths, eyes, noses, fingers, hands, feet, uncannily fetishized alongside the objects of consumption, a sort of “little shop of horrors.”
Two peering mannerist hands spaced disproportionately apart peel back the curtain along the back wall. Is the show about to start? But some of the food and body parts have already been nibbled on, so have we arrived late, where did everyone go? There is an eerily still feeling about this mis-en-scène which is supposed to be appeasing in its tame, soft colors. Instead, the draped, ghost-like furniture render a funereal atmosphere. Belanger embraces Surrealism, Pop art, among other art historical movements, propelling them to today’s age of ritualistic consumerism and angst. Catch this show while you can.
—Rachael Palacios