CONTRARY COMFORTS 1999
Painting with the crossed eyes of the romantic and the realist yields a dubious vision.
This series examines the bed and as both a functional and sentimental site. Works such as Point of Entry, Contrary Comfort, and Pressure Points offer mattresses as grids straying from the pure austere picture plane — grids with body. Apertures puncturing illusionistic cushioned surfaces refute the impenetrable flatness of modernist (male-gendered) painting as well as mirror the violent response to softness prevalent in our culture. The comfort offered is a contrary one, ruined by the pea (another sort of pearl) under the princess’ mountain of mattresses.
