Splash!
Presented in conjunction with the Moss Arts Center’s immersive screening of Minter’s Smash (2014), Splash! Features three works exploring Minter’s interest in the fictions and facades of women’s fashion as well as her fascination with the sensual qualities of paint itself and the human impulse for pleasure.
Shit-kicker (2006) was commissioned by Creative Time, as one of several billboards by the artist located throughout Chelsea, New York’s gallery district as part of a 2006 public art project. The model’s bejeweled feet, shorn in expensive high heeled shoes, speak at once of high fashion and privilege as well as the gritty reality of the urban environment of New York City. Mud splashes against the woman’s feet and calves provoking visceral reactions that careen between desire, pleasure, and disgust, a theme manifest in the videos as well.
Minter herself has one foot in the world of fashion photography, having worked on editorial assignments for major fashion brands. Green Pink Caviar (2009) stands among those works created in the interstices between fine art and fashion, having been produced as part of a photo shoot for MAC Cosmetics. While shooting images of models licking candy off a glass table (for eye makeup ads), she was inspired to videotape in between makeup changes for the stills, ultimately shooting video from under the table. For the video, the models pushed silver candies around in a pool of cake decorating syrups and vodka, painting with their tongues, shot in a style reminiscent of Hans Namuth’s iconic under-glass films of Jackson Pollock painting.
Playpen (2014) extends this sensibility, using a room full of babies behind a glass wall, ecstatically splashing in a pool of non-toxic silver paint over the course of twenty minutes. Their visceral delight expresses their innocent pleasure, as they create abstract patterns on the glass.
All three projects have been prominently shown in public, commercial contexts as well as in galleries. Green Pink Caviar was screened not only on MTV’s Times Square screen, but on Madonna’s Sticky and Sweet concert tour that year. Playpen was screened on giant outdoor kiosk at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.
