Galerie Barbara Thumm \ Group show – Echo / Anti-Echo

\Cindy Bernard, Meg Cranston, Sam Durant, David Hatcher, Jill Miller, Jason RhoadesEcho / Anti-Echo05.03. - 27.04.2005

Meg Cranston’s life-size piñatas are depicting Cranston herself. Molded and finished in brightly colored paper, each of the piñatas strikes a pose characteristic of the artist.

Playing upon the role of the piñata as a sacrificial object, she depicts herself as a martyr/totem, but she does not see her sculptures in a wholly negative light. “I suppose there is an aspect of masochism in the work,” Cranston states, “though in my view the masochist is a sort of grandiose daredevil who endures humiliation to prove they are invincible.” Cranston calls her sculptures “Magical Death” after a 1973 ethnographic film by Napoleon Chagnon and Timothy Asch, which vividly depicted the shamanic ceremonies of the Yanomamo Indians. In the film the Yanomano symbolically murder or “inflict” a “magical death” upon the children of enemy tribes to insure their own survival.

Read more

Exhibition Views

Galerie Barbara Thumm \ Group show – Echo / Anti-Echo