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DeCordova looks ahead with Andy Goldsworthy and Ursula von Rydingsvard

Museum And Gallery

Artistic anatomy

SEATING SCATOLOGY Greta Banks's sculpted chairs.

Let's start with "The Assholes."
There are three mahogany chairs chainlinked together. They have anus seats with hemorrhoids all over them. Everything was done with an automobile sparkle-finish. Color shifting paints and pearls. A lot of flake. The big chair started out as a wingback I picked up on Big Trash Day that I deconstructed and built back up with a big anus and a design inspired by the classic polka-dot fly agaric mushrooms.

This is a little different from your patterned Rococo investigations in the past . ..
I’m pretty scatological. I’ve got about 20 modes of art running through my head at all times. I wanted to take a break from the illustrative investigation of what I was defining as the hardest parts about living in our current world. It was very taxing for me. But there’s another part of me that works with the same ideas but from a simpler place. The primal, sexual forms have in them the same kind of existential play.

Everyone has an anus but everyone goes out of their way to never admit that they have one. We spend so much time making shiny beautiful things, presenting our grand statement of existence — that was the rococo pattern aesthetic I used before — but it’s also the sparkle thing. The domestic sheen of outer surfaces versus the fragility of buttholes. It’s simple. It’s supposed to be funny and self-deprecating. I want people to look at this and know it’s silly, but sincere and primal.

How did the work develop?
The project started out with these simple, goofy ideas and then it was about investing so much time and effort to develop specific complicated surfaces. All of this technical craft was new to me. It was humbling. Fourteen hours a day for four months, I didn’t sleep or eat! I had all these ambitious ideas and then realized that I was running out of time before the show. I got this company in Biddeford that does thermo-forming plastic that I used in the small multiples. It’s really exciting to work with those guys. I’m jealous of those art stars that get to outsource their ideas all the time, I’d get so much more done!

The large pink drips were something I wanted to do about ten years ago when I got out of grad school. The idea is a giant nail-polish drip. It’s a very simple idea but very labor intensive and toxic to make. I got pregnant so it’s taken me this long to get back to it. From there I wanted to make tiny multiples, the little drips. I was interested in making a product, an affordable art object.