Heels over Head

Robin Rice on Visual Art | Sharon Taffet: Absolutely PUMP-tacular

by Robin Rice

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Published: Dec 15, 2009

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More is more for some people, from sculptor-installation artist Yinka Shonibare to painter Audrey Flack to Philadelphia assemblage artist Karen Stone. All have effectively used dense accumulations of stuff to say something big. For Shonibare, the statement is essentially cultural and political. Stone's excesses suggest more contemporary and personal narratives. For Flack, a feminist agenda is enhanced by mood and memory.

Sharon Taffet's shoes at Bambi Gallery remind me of all three, but a spirit of exuberant fun is the dominant strain.

When I read the press materials before seeing the show, I was disconcerted by Taffet's decision to use only single shoes (from Payless). Shoes are supposed to come in pairs; to break them up seemed like separating salt from pepper, an avoidance of the implicit dialogue of similarity and difference. However, in the gallery I was not troubled by a sense of isolation or singularity. As Taffet treats them, each work is a stand-alone statement in which the artist embellishes the form of the shoe but does not present it as a distinctive item of apparel.

Although the works are feminine in appearance, with dainty details and glittery, spring-like color harmonies, they do not make a feminist statement about feet in high-heeled shoes. A Chinatown shoe dominated by a red and gold palette sports a cheap printed paper fan with a red tassel emerging from the heel interior, chopsticks diagonally across the toe, a scattering of cookie fortunes, a red rose, a miniature dragon mask and ever so much more. It suggests a contrast between kitsch elements of commercialized Chinese culture with real lives and authentic layers of tradition. Yet, although it reminds us of the space between surface and meaning, this shoe doesn't make us think of the relationship of foot-binding to Western women's shoes. (To greater and lesser degrees, respectively, both involve the painful and permanent distortion of women's feet from their natural forms.) One need not see this choice as a flaw of Taffet's approach, but it is a distinctive stance. Like the more minimal Warhol, for one, she is usually more concerned that each shoe be wonderful and beautiful than that it deliver a complex or important message.

Each work does have thematic and visual unity. Gallery owner Candace Karch, whose killer outfit for the opening included sleek black YSL shoes with a rhinestone accent, said, "I asked [Taffet] if she wanted to title them, but she said she wanted them to speak for themselves." Taffet singles out the toe and back of the heel for larger, more dramatic elements. She decorates the interior with compatible materials and uses the back interior heel as the platform for some sort of tall form — such as ostrich plumes or artificial foliage — that jets vertically into the air like a fountain and mimics the gesture of the heel.

The Chinatown piece was a favorite with visitors. Another highlight is one I'd call "The 18th-Century Peep-toe." This fantasy drips with late-19th- or mid-20th-century versions of rococo decorative tropes. Pasted jewels fill the spaces between pieces of costume jewelry with plastic or china medallions printed with sugary pastel portraits or bucolic courting couples. A big butterfly on the back of the heel flows nicely into spiraling gold laméd wires.

The themes include gambling or perhaps luck (dice, fanned-out playing cards, a bow made from pleated copied dollar bills); a forest that might be in Vietnam; and candy. A sort of Frida Kahlo-meets-Carmen Miranda shoe might amuse both women.

On the gallery walls, don't miss Dominic Episcopo's photographs of some of the shoes against pale, ethereal backgrounds. In some, a narrow depth of field pulls one area into sharp focus while softening others, adding an air of fragility and nostalgia.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Sharon Taffet: Absolutely PUMP-tacular | Through Dec. 27, free, Bambi Gallery, Piazza at Schmidts, 1001 N. Second St., 267-319-1374, bambiproject.com.

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