On view at the ArtistSpace from 4 to 17 September is Lindslee’s latest exhibition, “The Mind Crossed the Idea.”
Organized by Pintô Art Museum, the exhibition expands the artist’s repertoire of large-scale, museum-worthy sculptures. They mostly depict ordinary objects, to which we pay scant attention, which now become total and unavoidable in space. As if having been neglected for so long, they now insist to be looked at with concentration, confounding the viewer’s sense of scale, evoking unease, contempt, horror, awe, and sublimity.
The works are at once recognizable and alienating, at once familiar and strange. They are totems to what one imagines as the good life: The butter on toast, the shucked oyster, the ability to choose our version of physical hardship through the lens of fitness. In some pieces, Lindslee teases with the surreal, shoving the semiotic meaning of the work into the absurd.
Examples are the sculptures in which a cross becomes studded with rotting teeth and molars (Bite More Than You Can Chew), a chorus of fishes reveal their tiny, gaping mouths as if about to break into an aria (Something Fishy), and an aerobics class student, straight out of the ‘80s with her spandex get-up and blue eyeshadow, holds tenderly a bird on her index finger (The Tale of Fatima).
“The Mind Crossed the Idea” is a pun, a titillation, and a dare rolled into one—all pure delectability which conceals a sting just beneath the surface.
ArtistSpace is located at Ground Level, Ayala Museum Annex, Makati Avenue corner De La Rosa Street, Greenbelt Park, Makati City. The gallery is open daily from 11 am to 8 p.m. Admission is free. For queries on the exhibition, one may contact Jenny Villanueva at +632 8697 1015 or [email protected]. — CARLOMAR ARCANGEL DAOANA