Susannah Bettag: Vanitas Baby
Frey Norris Gallery
San Francisco, CA
1 February – 14 March 2007

Review by Tonya Warner

“The devil is in the details” was the first thought I had upon encountering Susannah Bettag’s work at Frey Norris, her first solo show. This was partially because of the meticulously painted decorative ornaments clustered across her canvases, but also because underneath these designs lie thin contour-line drawings taken from porn. Because of the bright, candy-pop colour schemes and meandering compositions, one does not immediately see the image of a breast or a woman faking a look of ecstasy, but there they are – hiding underneath cute little figures and decorations. Bettag claims that this is not intentionally a feminist critique but an exploration of fantasy and the contradictory nature of beauty.

What drew me to her work is not the cuteness of her trademark character – dubbed “little boo” and repeated in impressive numbers to create a stalactite-like sculpture in the middle of the gallery. Instead, I was interested in how these figures come into play in the layering of the paintings, as one is initially encouraged to look closely because of the top figures’ minute details, only to discover one is really staring intensely at an “indecent” image. It is nearly impossible to look at all levels of activity at once, an effect that basically becomes a hook: it mentally draws the viewer in, causing one to wonder, “what’s really going on here?” The “little boos” themselves are very in tune with the illustration-heavy Bay Area art scene and as such cannot really stand on their own as they bring nothing new or markedly different. In the show, there are also a few pieces that exclude the under layer, creating a simplicity that pales in comparison to the other work, and seems a little boring. Bettag also tries to subvert their cuteness with vinyl sculptures where the boos sport gruesome-looking wounds, in a move that just seems a bit overkill.

Although this is not “feminist” per se, it is definitely woman-based: all the drawings taken from hardcore porn are of women, and the overlaying patterns, at least according to the artist, are meant to reference the intricate repetitiveness of “women’s” handicrafts. The beautiful decorations are scattered about the canvas as the visualization of a fractured post-post-modern mind – the physical and psychic are confused and confusing – both visually and mentally. Which is beautiful and how do we even define beauty? Bettag’s paintings offer no answers or real clear questions, for that matter, just clues or hints at topics of discussion that rely heavily on how one reads her jumbled images.

http://www.susannahbettag.com/index.html
http://www.freynorris.com/docs/Frey-Norris-Vanitas-Baby-2007_event.htm
http://www.freynorris.com/

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Rea said:

susannah bettag's work makes me think of a western's woman's take on
Takashi Murakami. i mean bettag hides porn under little boos while
murakami makes ejaculating manga statues. also do you know where the
term little boo cam from, i can't help connecting it to the child-like
way we called wonuds or injuries boo-boos and having these little boos
above porn which might be seen as a serious boo-boo causers?