New York
E.V. Day
Henry Urbach Architecture
In E.V. Day's second solo exhibition, the ceiling, walls, and floor were all painted black. and pin-point spotlights illuminated the resin, fiberglass, and fabric art-works like crystalline gems. Two-foot-long resinous spermatozoa swam by overhead like icy translucent tendrils. Bits of female reproductive organs sparkled in the darkness like brilliant constellations in deep space, either floating or on the floor directly underneath another piece, as if they had dripped off and splattered there—a moment in time and space suspended.
In the far corner, shimmering clear nylon monofilaments (fishing line) spanned from one wall to the next, kitty corner. They emanated from a hole the size of a golf ball and ended in a yardwide, circular pinwheel configuration neatly tucked into the sheetrock. A viewer could imagine this triangular arrangement as in perspective, shooting off into infinity or another dimension beyond the blackened walls of the gallery. Stretched centrally inside this three-dimensional schematic was an attenuated blur of lacy red fabric straps attached with shiny little silver clasps. Across the room a similar work went from ceiling to floor, grounded in a circular aluminum pedestal, with the filaments distributed in the same pinwheel pattern. Clearly the red lacy stuff here and throughout the display had something to do with ladies' undergarments—to be specific, thongs and garter belts.
These two elements—clear plastic resin and red lingerie—were the main ingredients in Day's galactic sexual stew. The color red referred to blood in these biological forms, which elegantly rendered ovaries, a uterus or two, and lots of sparkling, hardened mucus. At crotch height a long, pinkish, life-size tongue jutted out of one wall. A stream of the ubiquitous clear resin was frozen mid-drip off the end. I was later told that the tongue came from a taxidermist's model of a panting coyote. Many of Day's references were not apparent until after reading the checklist; for instance, the egg/sperm hybrids of Astral Glide and Reproductive Super Nova were resin-coated chicken eggs. There were seductive artificial pearls embedded all around, as well as glittering fishing tackle and turn-buckles. Day's materials were rife with implications and metaphors. The pinwheel configuration turned out to be the emblem that marks public bomb shelters, which the vertical piece titled Launch Pad and its base were supposed to resemble. The bomb shelter logos offered womb-like sanctuary from the likes of Stealth, an installation in the gallery's other room composed of monofilament stretched taut from floor to ceiling. Horizontal glowing green lines tied it together, lit by a pair of ultraviolet, "black light" bulbs.
I didn't figure out that the glowing lights mapped the outline of the Stealth bomber. But once you knew, it became impossible to view it any other way. Other factors were more readily accessible, and the longer you looked the more you saw of Day's take on cosmic love and her philosophical, fantastical, and celestial meanderings that find associations between technology and a woman's body. —Christopher Chambers
