Nicola's favorite playground, which she calls Love, is landscaped with saccharine sweetness and innocent sensuality. It is an exclusive little world dominated by her playful decadence and supersaturated intentions. A place of lollipop meals and couture dresses recreated daily as she skips through its heartland.
Hoping for a taste of Nicky's bubblegum lips, Chester and the gaggle of gentlemen suitors follow her into the Trembling Prairie. When she simply vanishes, they are left to defend themselves against their communal solitude. Having stumbled for so long over their faulty attempts at manly charm and physical posturing, they reach out to one another, relaying their respective tales of public humiliation, infidelity and alienation from Nicola and Love. Their masculine gaze has turned in on itself—no longer boyishly naughty, it has simply soured in the vortex of confusion.
Drawn to the Beauty of the surface we are abused for our curiosities. We unwittingly become part of the cycle of tragic near misses—reliving chapters of missed opportunities for happiness in both Love and the Trembling Prairie. But finding ourselves lost in the gravitational splendor of tragedy, we willingly continue the search for the surprise happy ending that may define both Nicky's and our own journey.
A.A. Rucci
July 2005
–See more images from the exhibition
–Check out the incisive AA Rucci review and more at AFC (Art Fag City)
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