“About Face” was an intimate, career-spanning exhibit, comprised of approximately forty pieces that explored Lynn Hershman Leeson’s passion for masks. The major tropes associated with her art—mirroring, replication, projection, cyborgs, screens, avatars, humor—were represented here, in a questioning of the divides between fantasy, the virtual, and the real. Arranged nonchronologically, each artifact acted as a sort of hologram that references the whole. This work suggested someone deeply familiar with ungroundedness. It exuded the brilliance and caginess of the hypervigilant. The artist’s rigorous experimentation and attention to detail are impeccable, but, even at its most abstract, her work delivers visceral and emotional punches. It was a treat to view “About Face” in the city it was made in, the same city that has so shaped my own creative output.
Bordercrossings