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Article: Gillian Wearing at Jay Gorney.(New York, New York)(Review of Exhibitions)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Art in America
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The culture of childhood arrived with the modern era, historians say; previously, children were treated as small-scale adults. Gillian Wearing stands this latter notion on its head in her 1997 videotape 10-16, the main event of the young British artist's first solo show in New York. It features a variety of middle-aged men and women lip-synching the tape-recorded testimony of boys and girls between the ages of 1 0 and 16.
These short monologues are disturbing in ways that defy easy analysis. Grotesque is only a little too strong a word for the image of a balding, T-shirted, pot-bellied man lounging odalisque-style on a sofa and, smiling with the candid ...