Don't Let the Boys Win opens Sept. 19 at Mills Art Museum

September 19 - December 9, 2007

Don't Let the Boys Win
Kinke Kooi, Carrie Moyer, and Lara Schnitger

Wednesday, September 19:
Opening Reception: 5:30-7:30 pm, Art Museum
Artist's Lecture by Kinke Kooi: 7:30-8:30 pm, Danforth Hall, Art Building

Curated by Jessica Hough, director, Mills College Art Museum

The Mills College Art Museum presents Don't Let the Boys Win, featuring the dynamic work by nationally and internationally recognized artists Kinke Kooi, Carrie Moyer, and Lara Schnitger.

Don't Let the Boys Win is curated by Jessica Hough. This is Hough's first exhibition in her new position as director of the Mills College Art Museum. She was previously curatorial director at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum where she worked for over nine years.

Each of the artists in Don't Let the Boys Win, through different means, produces work that is imbued with an empowered female perspective. Boldness and humor characterize the work and many of the pieces are unapologetically erotic. Ornament and texture is integral to each of the artists' practices, and a hippie-inspired aesthetic is also at work. The title of the exhibition, borrowed from a sculpture of the same name by Schnitger, highlights the provocative playfulness of the work in this exhibition.

In her drawings on paper and on photographs, artist Kinke Kooi, based in Arnhem, Netherlands, imbues such things as human eyes, a hand, or an ordinary apartment building with a talisman-like quality. Kooi fills the space around the objects in her compositions with a dense swirling line pattern that gives the air a pillow-like effect. It is as if each object is cushioned by its surrounding, and at the same time is setting into motion the atmosphere around it.

Baba Jaga, 2007, Acrylic paint on photograph, 26 x 20 inches, Courtesy Feature Inc., New York

New York-based Carrie Moyer balances specific Feminist and other art historical references in her paintings with a seemingly effortless painting style. References to the history of abstract painting are evident, even as she seems to re-claim that history for her own end. Her process combines paint applied with a brush, with large areas of translucent poured pigment. In some paintings she mixes glitter with the pigment-risky business for most artists but Moyer makes it a seamless part of her seductive surfaces.

The Stone Age, 2006, Acrylic, glitter on canvas, 60 x 84 inches, Collection of Stephen Hilton, New York

Los Angeles-based Lara Schnitger's sculptures have an animated physical presence that makes it seem as if they might begin to move around the gallery. Each work is composed of a sewn fabric "skin" stretched over a wooden armature. The wooden structures are made from a series of joined long, narrow pieces, which point out into space and threaten to puncture the fabric into which they push. The literal tension on the fabric adds to the already emotional quality of the works.

The Only Bush I Trust is My Own, 100 x 92 x 72 inches, Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, New York