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Critiqued Assignment #3: Not Flat / "Hot Dog!"
Rotter, Rachel
Rotter, Rachel
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Student Artwork, 2017 Spring, Sculptures, Art and Art History, Department of
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Abstract
This is a digital photograph of Rachel Rotter's mixed media artwork. It was submitted as the third critiqued assignment, "Not Flat," on April 4, 2017, in Erin Harmon's Intermediate/Advanced Painting class. The student's artist statement for this work reads: "With a tumescent hot dog shoved into her mouth, the head of a woman, held aloft by a neck which seems to sink into the floor beneath, stares in horror at the viewer. Her eyes are agape, her cheeks and lips strained at the weight of the phallic object, an object which is disproportionately big in relation to her head. To push this trauma further, her skin is a mixture of pinks, purples, and reds, offering a sense of pain and asphyxiation – perhaps she is choking. This skin color is reminiscent of Philip Guston’s cartoonish characters, although most certainly painted to a different effect here. To continue, the color of the hotdog is meant to mirror that of her skin. While the meat is a mix of burnt sienna and cad red, there is an essence of white and purple to make it seem more skin-like. The bun, made of painted felt which offers a difference in material quality, also holds this strange mixture of hues. Adding to its phallic nature, the mustard characteristic of any New York food stand hotdog is now conveyed by the pattern of veins which run the length of the object. To parallel the materiality of the bun, the woman’s hair is a thick yarn; it flows from her head onto the floor, pooling around her like snakes. This incorporation of disparate materials serves to add an eerily life-like feature that clay alone would not convey. She is also on the floor, suggesting a direct gaze between work and viewer while also degrading her value. Through color, molding, and material, this piece is a continuation of my exploration of femininity and my questioning of objects as symbols. Like other pieces of mine, scale is distorted to connote aggression and meaning; color is used to convey misery. This piece holds success in its scale and materiality, but also holds unanswered questions: how can I complete the narrative of a piece to its fullest extent? How can I continue to question space, color, and form in both sculpture and painting?"
Description
This image was photographed and uploaded to DLynx in the Visual Resources Center during spring 2017.