State Of The Arts Online

EXCLUSIVE: Dancer Greg Sinacori during the making of Laurie Simmons’s The Music of Regret (2006) at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio, New York.

Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as ‘living objects’, animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets. Her work blends psychological, political and conceptual approaches to art making, transforming photography’s propensity to objectify people, especially women, into a sustained critique of the medium.

SEE: More images, videos, and news for Laurie Simmons.

LEARN: Laurie Simmons is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Romance of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!

Caption: Laurie Simmons, production stills from The Music of Regret — Act III, 2006. © Laurie Simmons, courtesy the artist, Salon 94, and Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York.

Those who are planning to see the Armory Show in New York this weekend (March 27- 30) will want to check out the Eleanor Antin (Season 2) solo exhibition at booth 557. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts has devoted its entire booth to exhibiting an Antin installation from the mid-eighties, Loves of a Ballerina—a mock movie theater entrance. Ronald Feldman had a solo show of works by Eleanor Antin earlier this year, and you can find out more information about both here.

The work of Art 21 artist Sally Mann (Season 1) is prominently featured in still, a new three person show at the Center for Visual Art at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, on view through April 30. The show offers up three contemporary photographers who grapple with issues of death and mortality in their work. Sally Mann’s photos feature old battlegrounds and she ponders what kind of lasting resonance a dead body has on a space.

You can find more information about the show here.