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MATERIAL PLEASURES Denise Yaghmourian’s intriguing sculptural forms are rooted in a hybrid of past art movements and styles, yet they resonate with current artistic concerns of today. Her wall-mounted box forms embellished in machine-made materials in primary colors bring to mind the austerity and seriality of Donald Judd’s Minimalist stacks. But covering Yaghmourian’s rigid cubes are strips of finely webbed fabric, which places the work in a long continuum first begun in the late 1950s by Claes Oldenberg, whose seminal soft sculptures established him as a forerunner to the Post-Minimalist movement. The simplicity of Yaghmourian’s surface veneers reveal a material-based sensibility—one akin to feminist principles by the virtue of their material identification as hook-and-eye tape primarily used in the construction of bras and corsets.i Meticulously arranged into neat rows, this tape of repetitive fastening devices creates regular lines of pattern that are interconnected by fine threads of interwoven stitches between the findings. Such attention to detail and process further aligns Yaghmourian’s work to Post-Minimalism as much as the implied mathematical set theory of the regimented order of the tape, patterns, hooks, and eyes. Of course, one of the more enduring connections can be seen in the fabric wrapped objects secured with string created by environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the early 1960s. Fred Sandback’s use of single lines of string to outline geometric form in space that he first created in 1966 also comes to mind. Another artistic link can be made to the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s through the regular intervals of triangles, rectangles, and other geometric shapes that emerge from the interlacing of thread and metal. In her monochrome fabric boxes, the tactile qualities of her surfaces hold equal ground with the subtle, contrasting patterns that emerge from the soft fabric and the regimented ordering of the metal findings. The end result is at once powerful and meditative—powerful by the singularity of each form and its strict adherence to order, and meditative by the laboriously handcrafted embellishment and soft, glowing color of the fabric. Yaghmourian, who received a Bachelor of Arts degree in painting at Arizona State University in 1991, developed her signature forms in 2003 when she was given the opportunity to create a new body of work for a solo exhibition at the Chandler Center for the Arts.ii Challenged with the possibilities of experimentation, she discovered a plethora of interesting materials by scavenging through fabric stores, thrift shops, and toy stores. Her first piece using the repetitive found object was a cube covered in gold zipper pulls—the regimented hinged form appearing like scales on a mechanical fish. Later, for an “all white” exhibition in 2003, she created an untitled sculptural form that gives a nod to the Fibanocci formulas of Sol LeWitt’s white constructions while paying homage to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. Yaghmourian’s repeated images are the staccato rhythm of hundreds of white plastic disposable shaving razors glued upright like so many marching soldiers. Not only is the artist aware of the precedents upon which she builds her ideas, but she is clearly aware of the metaphoric content of her work. To the artist, these “soldier” razors all stand together, trying to fall into line with what they are supposed to be doing, boldly showing off their sharp appearance. The idea came to her when she traveled to Los Angeles and passed the hillside of sleek white windmills that dot the landscape west of Palm Springs. To Yaghmourian, the razors in her work not only embrace the play of light and shadow on the repeating forms, but also emulate the cultural attitude of the West Coast art scene and its identification as “cutting edge.” Another sculptural wall piece that humorously addresses a dual meaning while holding its own aesthetically is Remedy, 2003. In this work, Yaghmourian glued hundreds of generic brand aspirins over a cube shape. Instead of regimented rows, however, she has piled them on like a jumble poured from the bottle. The irregular application causes a dense, yet lively play of shadows on the angled shapes of the aspirins. Popular understanding of the healing capacity of aspirin, in particular to thwart off heart attacks, makes this piece not only a formal study of shadow and light, but a symbol for healing. At the same time, by the quantity of little pills that encrust the surface of the cube, encourages one to reflect on society’s propensity to over medicate and to address all our symptoms and issues with chemicals. It is here that her work brings to mind the more contemporary strides made by Damien Hirst and Fred Tomaselli, who have each worked with arranging pharmaceuticals in elaborate patterns with both stunning visual and psychological effects. One of Yaghmourian’s more moving works from 2004 is Andrew’s Bed—a highly personal reflection on the suicide death of her brother—first presented in an exhibition about love at the Ice House in Phoenix. This three dimensional form is a single size mattress and pillow covered in tufts of tissues like white rose petals that catch the light and throw undulating shadows. The tissue-covered bed, with its iconic form and radiant light speaks of the sadness and tears shed from the loss of a loved one and symbolically provides a soft resting place—a final refuge for a troubled soul. Yaghmourian’s timely Degrees of Patriotism, 2005-2007, came about when she discovered hundreds of machine-embroidered American flag patches, many of them in various states of defect. Applying the swatches to a wood panel, she lined them up in rows and allowed the imperfections to become part of the piece. To the artist, these variations are not flaws; they represent the beautiful differences in each of us that together make up the strength of our country, from our different cultural backgrounds to our differing opinions about politics. While the metaphoric associations are clear, another powerful concept emerges in both her process oriented hook-and-eye tape works and in her found object assemblages. “My main sources of inspiration come from an interest and fascination in the ideas and processes of cloning,” Yaghmourian explains. “I am intrigued by the subtle and sometimes more obvious changes that occur in the repetition of the same object or image.”iii In keeping with the practice of seriality and choosing materials with a fiber base, Yaghmourian created Label, Jumpsuits, 2007, a wall installation made from fifty doll-size knitted white jumpsuits with booties that she found on one of her many forays into merchandise supply houses for source material. On each adorable little article of clothing, she embroidered a different label, inspired perhaps by becoming a young mother and discovering her expanding identity. Musing about the joys and dangers of growing up, with the potential bullies and pressures that await her children upon entering school, she chose such labels as: dreamer, pretender, artist, mother, listener. These words do not label her children, rather, they are autobiographical categories of the artist herself in adult life, now projected on to her children.iv Through her work, Yaghmourian embraces the obvious and accepts the ubiquitous manufactured nature of contemporary society. She finds beauty in the mundane, turning the products of our mass production/mass consumption into formal studies of shape and pattern. Her art is not hermetic; it is a poetic reverie fully conscious of its historic trajectory from formal concerns and critical theory. Yaghmourian’s sophisticated, elegant forms anchored in their materiality belie an emotional content that pulses with a humanistic optimism that goes beyond cerebral exercise to a highly personal expression of her place in the world. Julie Sasse, Chief Curator and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Tucson Museum of Art i For an in-depth look at Post-Minimalism, see Robert Pincus-Witten, Post-Minimalism (New York: Out of London Press, 1977). ii Information for this essay was taken from conversations with the artist, in particular, a phone interview with the author on 11 January 2008. iii Denise Yaghmourian, quoted in “Cube Shape Dominates Surprise Museum Exhibit,” Surprise Today, 28 September 2005, B1, 3. iv Lilia Menconi, “Contain Yourself,” Phoenix New Times, 20-26 September 2007, 48. |