Bari Ziperstein
See Line Gallery at the Pacific Design Center
- Tucker Neel -
Bari Ziperstein, Backstock, 2009; vinyl wallpaper, piñata, plastic chain; site-specific installation, See Line Gallery at the Pacific Design Center
Marlon Protector, 2009; altered slip cast earthenware, inlay finished with low fire glazes and platinum luster; 13 x 13 x 21 inches; courtesy the artist and See Line Gallery, Los Angeles
The abundance of “stuff” in Richard Hamilton’s iconic collage Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? is what makes his critique of modern living so compelling. With its lollipop-penis-wielding muscleman, cramped acid-orange couch, bosom-pinching pinup and a hefty canned ham on a skinny-legged coffee table, the erotic absurdity of the cluttered scene is both mesmerizing and overwhelming. More than a half-century later, Bari Ziperstein’s installation Perk, hosted by See Line Gallery at the Pacific Design Center (PDC), updates Hamilton’s aesthetic and conceptual proposition through the use of an entirely different set of unexpected collage techniques. The result is a phenomenal site-specific investigation into the things we certainly don’t need, but can’t live without.
Ziperstein’s installation exists in a repurposed showroom at the PDC, a space taken over after its original inhabitants closed shop due to the economy. The room is punctuated by small ceramic sculptures, perched atop bizarre pedestal conglomerations formed from conjoined and refigured household furniture. Mashed-together coffee tables, bedposts and mirrors, with odd protruding limbs and obstructing angles, they effectively undermine any Modernist notion of form following function.
The ceramic works on these wooden supports juxtapose incongruous, often sexual forms in uproarious and hallucinatory ways. They amplify the bawdiness, irreverence and seething horniness that lurks behind the accumulation of knick knacks. For example, in Full Fruit clamshells on a small bathing beauty figurine are switched out for gargantuan nautilus knockers, exaggerating the not-so-latent eroticism of the original ceramic mold.
Ziperstein’s ceramics are assembled using prefab molds from which objects are cast, then strategically disassembled, reassembled, fired and finally glazed as one piece. This produces one-of-a kind works that successfully mimic the mass-produced patina of their progenitors. They appear as a mutated collection of decorative taste, a sort of Kunstkammer of tchotchkes that cannibalize each another, dissolving into and sprouting from their equally irregular display settings.
Continuing the exhibition through the boutique, Ziperstein’s Backstock covers the entire backroom—including the carpet—with a kaleidoscopic vinyl photocollage of an overstuffed chandelier stockroom. A handmade golden chandelier piñata dangles in the center of the room from a mass of cheesy plastic-chain swags. The display and its attendant visitors are reflected in a floor-to-ceiling mirrored wall, creating a spectacular and overwhelming situation, inspiring wonderment, cell phone self-portraiture and questions of just what constitutes inventory, surplus and need. The work also alludes to the fine line between avid collector and compulsive hoarder.
Because Perk resides in the PDC, the most ostentatious temple to decadence and obsolescence west of Vegas, Ziperstein’s curious works effectively implicate the “high end” showrooms just down the hall, subsuming their stock and trade into her critique. She inspires visitors to look at the goods sold at these neighboring boutiques as equally strange objects. In calling attention to this comparison, Ziperstein’s work effectively asks, at what point do the possessions we use to mark our identity and decorate our lives end up becoming a burden? When does our stuff consume us?
Tucker Neel is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.