What does motherhood have to do with Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage and Marina Abramović? Sara Corley Martinez is here to show you.
On Saturday, Corley Martinez opens “Drawing Restraints” at Mantle Art Space, a solo exhibition that brings major works by lauded artists from the past century into conversation with motherhood — with a healthy dose of the absurd added in for good measure.
Central to the show is a video piece that recreates Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint. While Barney’s original work was more focused on physical restraint, Corley Martinez plays on the oft-heard refrain that having children would hinder her practice as an artist with a film that’s projected not onto the bare wall but over the top of a large, childlike scribbled drawing.
Also featured is a small, gold-plated cast of a child’s teeth — Corley Martinez’s husband’s chompers, to be exact. She plated them in gold as a response to Sherrie Levine’s Fountain (Buddha), which itself is a recreation of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain.
According to the artist, the cast of her husband’s teeth was “elevated to a sacred object by his own mother,” who bequeathed it to her once the couple married.
“I decided to give them the golden treatment,” Corley Martinez said.
Free, 6-9 p.m. Saturday, February 22, Mantle Art Space, 714 Fredericksburg Road, mantleartspace.com.
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This article appears in Feb 12-25, 2020.
