Ellen Durkin's MFA Exhibition Blindheaded

In Towson University’s Holtzman Gallery through April 18, 2009

Apr 6, 2009

Baltimore artist constructs contemporary art that comments on the dictates and restrictions that fashion places on women.

In an arresting show at Towson University’s March 26th opening reception for contemporary artist Ellen Durkin’s exhibition “Blindheaded,” four nude models with runway hair and makeup wore fifty-pound iron cage-like dresses.

The Metal “Dresses”

Durkin says “she is especially interested in the limitations society imposes upon women through fashion’s dictates.” Her dress creations are a confounding cross between ribbed corsets, bustles, hoop skirts, iron cages, and robotic coils. Constructed of hand-forged iron bars, hammered metal plates, and copper curlicues, the dresses possess a medieval yet futuristic replicant-like affect.

When worn, each dress twists and curves away from the model’s body yet constricts and confines her shoulders and rib cage. At rest unsupported on the floor, the dresses assume an aggressive and barbaric stance. The viewer doesn’t know whether the dresses will take off powered by nuclear blast or were rescued from rusting away in a rubbish dump.

Opening Night

At the opening reception, the dresses were exhibited for a crowd that packed the small gallery. The models slowly paraded in the dresses, perilously perched on shoes with 8-10” platforms constructed of copper, wood, and leather.

One of the models passed out and had to be extricated from her cage. Durkin joked that it’s not often an artist can attest that her art nearly killed someone.

Graphite Drawings

Besides the dresses, the exhibit consists of graphite drawings. The first drawings the viewer encounters are the artist’s early ones. They are quite small, drawing the viewer in for a close inspection. They feature tiny pieces of trash like bandaids, straps, string, and crumpled paper in scenes that resemble human escapades. Two “figures” appear to be getting married. One hapless guy seems covered up in bubble wrap.

Then the drawings get bigger. The trash becomes larger than life. An imposing bundle of trash and leather straps resembles a bucking bronco.

The drawings get even larger. Arresting visions of bizarre fashion adorn larger than life women. Are the women part machine or part animal, alive or rotted, past or futuristic? The details of grommets, laces, puffy sleeves, eyeholes, metal tubes are rendered in exquisite realistic detail. Faint lines and “mistakes” remain because the artist prefers to leave the history of the drawing as it develops. The final huge drawings and the metal dresses evolved from the initial tiny paintings when the artist first started looking at trash scattered throughout her studio, arranging it, drawing it, and giving it human context.

Gallery Show

Hours for Towson University’s Center for the Arts MFA Holtzman Gallery are Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00am–4:00pm. Durkin’s exhibition “Blindheaded” runs through Saturday, April 18, 2009.

The copyright of the article Ellen Durkin's MFA Exhibition Blindheaded in Special Art Gallery Exhibits is owned by Suzanne Hill. Permission to republish Ellen Durkin's MFA Exhibition Blindheaded in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.