Valerie Hegarty. George Washington Melted 4, 2011; canvas, stretcher, paper, acrylic paint, and gel medium; 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York.

“What kind of monster are you?” is the chorus from a single by the ’90s pop-punk group Slant 6.¹ The question accuses the listener of being something other than human. However, the singer-guitarist Christina Billotte’s flat delivery also invites the listener to self-identify as non-human: what kind of monster are you? Monstrousness, then, is a condition from which we recoil even as we uneasily recognize its latent potential within us. High points of terror in horror movies often coalesce around scenes in which characters are confronted with the realization that the monster is like them or is in fact one of them—a recurring moment of recognition frequently accompanied by graphic representations of bodily disintegration or somatic disorder.

The artists in The Modern Monster, a whip-smart yet wonderfully unpretentious group show at Queen’s Nails curated by Jeanne Gerrity, consider with both seriousness and humor the hovering existential threat posed by the monstrous. (Disclosure: Gerrity is a contributor to Art Practical.) Gerrity borrows her exhibition’s title from an essay by Lars Bang Larsen that offers a post-Marxist reading of the zombie—the monster with perhaps the most current pop-cultural cachet—as an ambiguous figure for capitalism’s perfected condition, in which subjects are alienated beyond death itself.² Larsen’s zombie is the last gasp of monster-as-metaphor and the final turn of the screw that collapses both external and self-ascribed alienation onto one chaotic non-being. Although the works in The Modern Monster aren’t nearly as polemical as Larsen’s thesis, many of them opt for methods and materials that formalize the messy business of unbecoming that he traces over the course of his essay.

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In Space Cubes, Hegarty measures the interior of Sol LeWitt’s Open Cubes (1” x 1” x 1”) and creates her own blocks of space from compacted paper to resemble images from the Hubble telescope.  The artist then arranges these paper chunks of space in a typical LeWitt building block formation which begin to unfurl as the structure grows in height.  The piece reveals Hegarty’s reverence toward rigid form and its relationship to philosophical and mathematical concepts yet it belies her instinct to admit that elements of chance, irrationality, and  chaos inspire the creation of such scientific systems.

Valerie Hegarty received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. She has shown internationally including solo shows at Guild & Greyshkul, New York; MUSEUM 52, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and CTRL Gallery, Houston. Additionally, she has been included in group exhibitions at the Depart Foundation, Rome; The Drawing Center, New York and White Columns, New York. Her work is currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum as part of their permanent collection and at the Highline as part of their public art program. Hegarty lives and works in Brooklyn.

Hegarty’s show “Cosmic Collisions” will be at Nicelle Beauchene until April 11, 2010.

VIDEO LOUNGE:: Shannon Plumb, ‘Olympics (Track and Field),’ 2005

Shannon Plumb’s film based on the summer games of the Olympics channels the spirit of slapstick comedy and the physical humor of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and particularly Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia.  Plumb portrays her version of the athletes in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, track and field game sports, and warm up exercises. Employing a low-fi aesthetic by using Super-8 film, stationary camera shots, and hand-made props and costume, Plumb  exaggerates the emotions of heroics, anxiety, and pomp and circumstance that accompany the games..  Olympics is a one-woman show starring the artist as all of the characters and acting as the creative force behind  the film.

Plumb’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City amongst others. Her films have been screened at festivals internationally. In 2007, her Ocularis at 10 was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.