Susan Smith-Pinelo

April 12 through May 11, 2003 - Tues-Sat 10-6, Sun 11-6
Opening reception: Saturday April 12, 6-8pm

Kenny Schachter ConTEMPorary
14 Charles Lane, NYC 10014
t. 212 807-6669 f. 645-074
www.RoveTV.net schachter@mindspring.com

Between West and Washington Streets Perry and Charles Streets

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Susan Smith-Pinelo is a Washington D.C.-based video artist who is presenting her New York solo debut at Kenny Schachter conTEMPorary after recent exhibits at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Corcoran Biennial at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in D.C.On view will be Asstronomical Proportions I and Asstronomical Proportions II, consisting of a grouping of monitors atop tall, mirror-covered, semicircular platforms that reference any strip club. Also on view will be a series of large-scale photographs that relate to the videos, but are independent, stand-alone pieces.

“In both video sculptures, Smith-Pinelo presents women’s body parts as abstracted fragments standing in for all the forms of vicarious fantasy consumption that populate hip-hop and rap videos. She is particularly intrigued with how this fictive portrayal of the good life butts heads with the real lifestyles of both the performers and their audience. The fancy cars, guns, furs, jewelry, and thug life seen in typical hip-hop videos are little more than rented window dressing and playacting. Smith-Pinelo simultaneously celebrates and critiques this language of hip-hop as both an informed viewer and a willing participant. In highlighting hip-hop’s degrading yet seductive fetishism of women and her reaction to it, she strips away the veneer of the genre’s dearly held fantasies. Yet these fantasies, as she perceptively points out, have a power and pull that transcend reality and keep her going back for more.” Stacey Schmidt, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art excerpt from her essay: "Fantasy Underfoot: The 47th Corcoran Biennal" (Dec. 2002)