Wolf Whistles
Athena Papadopoulos
Featuring a new collaboration with Monster Coat Club (Papa x MCC)
November 6 - December 11, 2016
138 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002
PRESS RELEASE:
Shoot The Lobster is pleased to present Wolf Whistles, an installation specifically conceived for and custom fitted to the Shoot The Lobster gallery space. This is the artist's first solo presentation in New York.
Using the form of the meat-locker/butcher shop as a point of departure Papadopoulos employs a wide range of over the counter materials to color, mark, bruise and stain her stuffed hanging sculptures.
Among these materials are meat hooks slathered in her trademark concoction of resin-based glue mixed with self-tanner and synthetic wig clippings alongside taxidermy animal claws, hair dyes, Pepto Bismol, red wine, lipstick and nail polish- materials that are traditionally used dye the inside and/or outside of the human body/skin.
On the surface of the stuffed cushion-like sculptures are DIY image transfers, hand applied, cut out and recomposed through meticulous hand stitching. These images include everything from photographs taken from the artist’s personal archive and images of corpse flowers, worms, blown-up tattoos, images of decaying body parts todrawings of women inspired by characters from Papadopoulos' personal history. Lasciviously posed figures in states of celebration as well as the disembodied head of the artist can also be spotted floating around in various guises.
The sculptures are harnessed by chains; Dripping from the chains are candy-apple red manicuredanimal claws. The sculptures are also adorned with oversized vermillion-tinted polyester resin "charms" encapsulating collections of cartoonish pig figurines, legs ripped from faux frogs thatmingle with confetti, peanuts shells, chicken bones, Hooters floor detritus, freeze-dried bloodworms, mini octopi and shrimps all swimming around with feminine negliges such as g-strings and thongs.
The sculptures are at once consumable but also all-consuming. They are supersaturated with the world of the artist, soaking these stimuli in they become transformed and stand in as surrogates for the artist herself.
In her new collaboration with London's Monster Coat Club (Hannah R. Hopkins and Sofia A. Ginevra Gianni), a fur fashion project, who together with Papadopoulos' sculptural installation in mind, have designed three limited-edition fox, wolf, rabbit, Mongolian lamb and leather collaged fur coats that have been tattooed with Papadopoulos' drawings of women as well as adorned with her hand-made stuffed alcohol bottles and black & bloodied hearts.The coats also feature a selection of Papadopoulos' DIY patches.