Top:
C ana
/
Caps, 20 0 6 ,
digital print, laminated
on acrylic, gold-plated
electroformed copper
[h.3oin, w. 23 ill).
Bottom:
A 10-minute video
installation in which
Kalman demonstrates
her process, 2006.
meets destructive, beautiful meets grotesque, and the visceral body
is mediated by mechanical reproduction.
Admittedly, Kalman mines these paradoxes. “In today’s image-
saturated culture, we think of our bodies in terms of [abstracted]
self-image, rather than actual bodily experience,” she said during
her residency at the Santa Fe A rt Institute this year. Beginning
with
H ard W ear,
2006, Kalman translated her cathartic performanc-
es into still and moving images. By beginning with actual bodily
experience and moving back to the self-image, Kalman places the
primary importance on the body, thereby challenging how we relate
to our bodies in an image-dominated culture. In her practice, craft
indeed seems to be the elephant in the room as she oscillates be-
tween recorded body transgressions and installation environments.
While
Bloom s
reaches an audience as medium-size color inkjet
prints,
H ard W ear
is a multimedia installation that includes objects,
photographs and dismembered
LC D
video screens. In
H ard W ear
and other installations, such as
D ress Up D ress D ow n,
2007, and
Cor-
pus, Figure, Skate,
2008, Kalman defines her spaces by quiet and
sterile presentations that recall scientific and medical display strate-
gies, like those of Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum (though perhaps
less cluttered). In
H ard W ear
she relies on metalsmithing skills and
materials to generate bodily work, though you w ill find no pen-
dants or brooches here. Electroforming, gold plating, gold leafing,
pearls and gemstones are all used in an infantile exploration of the
sensory receptors (i.e., the mouth, nose, ears and hands). The na-
ïveté with which she inserts these materials into or liberates them
from her orifices—
thereby mocking the orifices’ socially accepted
use—
renders them ludicrous in terms of function.
In fact it is this misuse of body, material and craft processes that
so unsettles the viewer. As the transgressions of the
H a rd linear
installation require the presence of the body for their potency, Kal-
man’s presentation employs indexical media—photographs and vid-
eo—
to keep the body present after the activity has ended. While the
props and remnants she creates are usually present in the gallery,
Kalman denies any attachment to the discrete or decontextualized
object. Her closely cropped photographs and videos of the object’s
use on the body direct our understanding of the physical objects
presented. This control over how we perceive her ambiguous props
clashes with the traditional jewelry object’s absence of context
without the body or in the gallery space. In true paradoxical fashion,
the object and the individual are martyred as the viewer is confront-
ed by a sexualized orifice, performing lewd acts.
“ I think of my work as transgressions o f the body,” Kalman
confides. And perhaps transgression is the operative word in more
ways than one. Kalman freely and unabashedly moves in and out of
craft: she rejects it yet holds it sacred, even showing often at Sienna
Gallery, a noted jewelry gallery in Lenox, Massachusetts. Her ob-
jects owe much to technical training, though without the context
of the body they would cease to be interesting. It is through her
transgressions that Kalman transforms the body into a site for craft-
ed objects, image making and sociological inquiry.
G abriel C raig is a metalsm ith, w riter a n d craft a ctiv ist currently liv in g
in H ouston, Texas.
♦
laurenkalman.com
siennagallerv.com
oct/novo9 american craft 045
www.freedowns.net & www.journal-plaiza.net
