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The Art of Everyday Not Perfect Surfaces

Cheryl Donegan's conceptual works show the burdensome details of the domestic avant garde.
Cheryl Donegan, Line, 1996. Video, sound, color; 14:20 min. Courtesy the artist and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

Oddly juxtaposed materials and impulsive surfaces are the aesthetic endeavors of video and performance artist Cheryl Donegan. In her first solo museum exhibition Scenes+Commercials at the New Museum in New York, Donegan explores the production of images in mass culture, consumption, and art history. The show is a grand sweep of her diverse works from video art, paintings, and social media-related projects.

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As a woman and a mother, Donegan’s work is flooded with images of domestic products and a woman’s decision to choose materials for self and family from cleaning products to clothing. Take for instance a still from the video Whoa Whoa Studio (for Courbet), where Donegan wears a laundry soap container as a mask while bending over a television with a spray bottle in her hand. The character is both a whimsical creature and a product of the everyday. Her works try to make those pedestrian moments into abstractions.

Cheryl Donegan, Whoa Whoa Studio (for Courbet), from the series The Janice Tapes, 2000. Video, sound, color; 3:21 min. Courtesy the artist and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

In her video performance work from the early 90s and spanning over a decade, Donegan often used her own body to parody commercials and music videos, all the while questioning feminism and politics of self-representation. She often used her body to make paintings, then used her body to make sculptural performances. In her paintings, she aims for an imperfect look,  to make work that is impulsive and of the moment. She says, “Legacy is now, because now is when you are making your work. You are dealing with what you feel is urgent, responding to what it’s like to be living now, today, in this fast-moving uncomfortableness.”

Inspired by the films of Marjorie Keller and Chantal Akerman, Donegan’s work explores the domestic avant garde, pushing forward with the physical and psychological pressures women feel day to day. Her works amplify the burdensome but also the colorful absurdities. In her Subversion paintings, Donegan’s pieces are titled after commodities like eBay, The Skirt, and Accessories. They are fractured shapes on flimsy cardboard to comment on our consumer tendencies.

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“Strong images in culture don’t do it for me. They don’t make me smile. They don’t give me as much pleasure as something discarded on the street; a crushed plastic bag, a container of food sort of scattered across the sidewalk,” she writes in her artist statement. “I don’t like highly crafted images.”

Cheryl Donegan, Lieder, from the series The Janice Tapes, 2000. Video, sound, color; 8:16 min. Courtesy the artist and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

Cheryl Donegan, Yr Geisha, 2010. Water-based oil, acrylic, and spray paint on canvas, 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm). Courtesy the artist

Scenes+Commercials is on display through April at the New Museum. To learn more about the artist click here.

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