Clothing and its
wear are dominant expressions of gender, identity and social
status. Dress, undress, and related attitudes of desire, fetish
and fancy weave prominently throughout the history of art, literature
and drama. Fashion and cosmetics are potent engines of modern and
contemporary media, advertising and photography.
New York-based Jil Weinstock’s feminist-influenced cast rubber works echo the folds, patterns and ephemerality of clothing. Working to exploit fundamental flaws in the logic of fashion, Weinstock’s cast media, collaged with women’s vintage garments, explore the substantiality, sheerness and frivolity of dress. In certain works, the artist encases garments in a translucent, amber-colored, skin-like rubber membrane. By effectively turning our customary encounter of the clothed body inside-out, Weinstock raises ambiguity as to what is concealed and revealed by clothing.
The presence of once-worn garments evokes loss and time past in a manner not dissimilar to snapshots of absent family members. In a number of works here, the artist amplifies this reading, incorporating X-ray or negative-like images of dresses. Through such ghostly afterimages, the artist offers sartorial traces of a nostalgic past. Weinstock’s Group Portrait (2007-2008), an ensemble installation of thirteen cast rubber-collaged girls’ skirts and blouses, directly references the photographic experience of the grade school class portrait; on display are the familiar strictures of formal dress, frontal pose and group hierarchy. Weinstock’s light boxes employ the color, pattern and folds of clothing as photographic transparency. The delicate tracery and golden glow of nightgowns in A. Arlene (2004) and A. Gillian (2003) recall the characteristically organic, ethereal nature of the photogram.
Weinstock’s A. Hero (2004) and c. homme (2003) rather differently project the rigorous geometric lines of men’s shirts. In contrast to A. Arlene and A. Gillian, these light box works cast shirt patterns with cool deliberate objectivity, reminiscent of brand-based, point-of-purchase shopping mall advertising. A further departure for Weinstock, her minimalist Daily Uniform (2008) presents the form and essence of men’s work shirts and their display. The rubber-cast Gap shirts comprising this installation recall the pioneering early work of sculptor Claes Oldenburg and the Pop Art movement. In Daily Uniform, the reconstitution of slickly packaged objects of consumption become visual spectacle. Weinstock’s linear row of seven identical, waxy rubber shirts, perched on retail metal shelving, reinforce the predictability and conformity of day-to-day attire and work.
If Weinstock’s palette tends to favor burgundy, gold, sepia and similarly subdued hues, this sensibility is countered by a festive, postmodern use of arbitrary color in other pieces on exhibit here, such as her zipper work, E128 and J117, M.S. Everyday Colors (2005), and her Melon suite (2006). Moreover, the artist’s complicated perspectives on clothing and gender may be gauged from her playful, yet deliberate use of characteristically feminine colors, including luminous pinks, peaches and lavenders, and her titles which affectedly reference varieties of fruit, flowers, champagne and wine. Weinstock’s work posits that garments—especially girls’ and women’s garments—are rarely gender-neutral.
Dan Younger
Director
Feminist Perspectives
Layered with feminist commentary, Jil Weinstock's minimalist visions of domesticity focus on the manipulation and display of clothing, including rubber-encased vintage dresses, work shirts and zippers.
The frills and fragility of second-hand dresses, particularly in contrast to Daily Uniform- Weinstock's duplicated, chalky sculpted work shirts-suggest outfits worn to mark special occasions, like proms or weddings, culturally-significant to women. Old nightgowns and stockings, on the other hand, as pictured in works like A. Arlene, speak to a more intimate, transient aspect of femininity, with skin-like creases and wrinkles of fabric emanating through sepia-toned rubber. Here we see the real sense of nostalgia running through much of Weinstock's work, where formally simplistic images remind the viewer of a universal- their own- domestic sphere, inseparable from traditional feminine implications.
In works like Blue Ribbon, Weinstock fashions a dress nest, in which a little girl's dress encased in rubber is encircled and protected by an expansive petticoat. Two visions of womanhood emerge from the narrative of Weinstock's sartorial commentary, one embedded in the familiarity of the home, the other tethered to a more outward notion of self-display. In both views the dress serves as a larger metaphor for clothing's communication of gender paradigms.
Roxanne Smith '11
New York-based Jil Weinstock’s feminist-influenced cast rubber works echo the folds, patterns and ephemerality of clothing. Working to exploit fundamental flaws in the logic of fashion, Weinstock’s cast media, collaged with women’s vintage garments, explore the substantiality, sheerness and frivolity of dress. In certain works, the artist encases garments in a translucent, amber-colored, skin-like rubber membrane. By effectively turning our customary encounter of the clothed body inside-out, Weinstock raises ambiguity as to what is concealed and revealed by clothing.
The presence of once-worn garments evokes loss and time past in a manner not dissimilar to snapshots of absent family members. In a number of works here, the artist amplifies this reading, incorporating X-ray or negative-like images of dresses. Through such ghostly afterimages, the artist offers sartorial traces of a nostalgic past. Weinstock’s Group Portrait (2007-2008), an ensemble installation of thirteen cast rubber-collaged girls’ skirts and blouses, directly references the photographic experience of the grade school class portrait; on display are the familiar strictures of formal dress, frontal pose and group hierarchy. Weinstock’s light boxes employ the color, pattern and folds of clothing as photographic transparency. The delicate tracery and golden glow of nightgowns in A. Arlene (2004) and A. Gillian (2003) recall the characteristically organic, ethereal nature of the photogram.
Weinstock’s A. Hero (2004) and c. homme (2003) rather differently project the rigorous geometric lines of men’s shirts. In contrast to A. Arlene and A. Gillian, these light box works cast shirt patterns with cool deliberate objectivity, reminiscent of brand-based, point-of-purchase shopping mall advertising. A further departure for Weinstock, her minimalist Daily Uniform (2008) presents the form and essence of men’s work shirts and their display. The rubber-cast Gap shirts comprising this installation recall the pioneering early work of sculptor Claes Oldenburg and the Pop Art movement. In Daily Uniform, the reconstitution of slickly packaged objects of consumption become visual spectacle. Weinstock’s linear row of seven identical, waxy rubber shirts, perched on retail metal shelving, reinforce the predictability and conformity of day-to-day attire and work.
If Weinstock’s palette tends to favor burgundy, gold, sepia and similarly subdued hues, this sensibility is countered by a festive, postmodern use of arbitrary color in other pieces on exhibit here, such as her zipper work, E128 and J117, M.S. Everyday Colors (2005), and her Melon suite (2006). Moreover, the artist’s complicated perspectives on clothing and gender may be gauged from her playful, yet deliberate use of characteristically feminine colors, including luminous pinks, peaches and lavenders, and her titles which affectedly reference varieties of fruit, flowers, champagne and wine. Weinstock’s work posits that garments—especially girls’ and women’s garments—are rarely gender-neutral.
Dan Younger
Director
Installation views of Apparitions
Feminist Perspectives
Layered with feminist commentary, Jil Weinstock's minimalist visions of domesticity focus on the manipulation and display of clothing, including rubber-encased vintage dresses, work shirts and zippers.
The frills and fragility of second-hand dresses, particularly in contrast to Daily Uniform- Weinstock's duplicated, chalky sculpted work shirts-suggest outfits worn to mark special occasions, like proms or weddings, culturally-significant to women. Old nightgowns and stockings, on the other hand, as pictured in works like A. Arlene, speak to a more intimate, transient aspect of femininity, with skin-like creases and wrinkles of fabric emanating through sepia-toned rubber. Here we see the real sense of nostalgia running through much of Weinstock's work, where formally simplistic images remind the viewer of a universal- their own- domestic sphere, inseparable from traditional feminine implications.
In works like Blue Ribbon, Weinstock fashions a dress nest, in which a little girl's dress encased in rubber is encircled and protected by an expansive petticoat. Two visions of womanhood emerge from the narrative of Weinstock's sartorial commentary, one embedded in the familiarity of the home, the other tethered to a more outward notion of self-display. In both views the dress serves as a larger metaphor for clothing's communication of gender paradigms.
Roxanne Smith '11