On "Whites" by Andra Ursuta by James D Bowman 3

By the time the eeriness of the sculptures sinks in, the breath-robbing awe is obstinate. Despite or because of this, I’ve been unable to contend with them. They seem to me to be a kind of Alterity incarnate; a precise kind of distanced apartness, which turns out to be clone-creepy, and not as unlike oneself as one would like. Here the proof, however, is: the beautiful horror of unfettered homogeneity. So much of me is irritated by these—what? Creatures? Characters? Snot-clogged Kleenex spruced up into unnamed deities and half cast aside like idols without idolaters? Or are all who stare, semi-spellbound, idolaters—or semi-idolaters, at least—of these? Contemporary art lovers have come to expect eruptions of obsession and “rebelliousness” [against?] to occur in the “white cube” context, but these pieces' whiteness, hammered home by the colorful chairs etc. on which they perch like so many barn owls, seems like a kind of cynical complicity, interested in nothing and rebellious only in their odd and mob-like over-identification with a cause that curbs enthusiastic, liberating revolt. The most interesting section of the press release reads: “The sculptures’ smooth casings and clean modernist geometries contrast with their gaping orifices and skeletal protrusions, suggesting cool modernism infected with a macabre bodily abjection. Instead of pedestals, the figures rest on old kitchen chairs, secondhand office furnishings, modernist design classics, and cast transparent resin bases, some embedded with fake vegetable slices. In seating her 'monuments,' Ursuta underscores their decrepit exhaustion. The clear hierarchy of sculpture and its base is undone (and who can forget her fellow Romanian Constantin Brancusi’s first nullification of the easy distinction between them?). If a commemorative monument is usually soaring and grandiose, implicating high-minded ideals and righteous values, Ursuta’s morose, dejected versions tell of the downfall of the Western modernist, idealist project. They remind us as well of the instability of the images we use to commemorate history—images that can be endlessly bent and adjusted to shifting political needs.” The show reminded me of two sentences from a poem by Eduardo C. Corral. First: “Too poor to afford lilies, / she walked down the aisle holding a glass of milk.” Second: “If I dream I’m cupping her face / with my hands, I wake up holding / the skull / of a wolf.”