Babs Reingold: Luna Window

This event is free and open to the public.

Babs Reingold: "Luna Window"
September 12 - November 16

AC Institute announces a new installation, Luna Window, by Babs Reingold opening September 12, 2013 with an artist’s reception 6-8pm.

The installation, four organza-stained and hair-stuffed ladders poking from decaying windows and doors, chronicles Reingold’s continuing exploration into poverty, including a stay in public housing.

Her statement notes: “In 1940, public housing was constructed on the former 35-acre site of Luna Park, Cleveland’s answer to Coney Island. The housing project, Woodhill, was the city’s largest. I moved into Woodhill at age fourteen, white, Jewish and for all wants and purposes, alone.”

According to the artist, “Luna Window” is one in a series of exhibits that expose the irony of fantasy descending into a wretched reality. It is a narrative, she said, of broken homes, broken dreams and the despair of a prison, where trapped by fear, occupants press against the window unable to escape, peering at a society isolated from them.

Reingold fabricates her soft sculpture-like ladders in a laborious process. The shells are stained silk organza, which are stuffed with human hair and then sewn into the ladder shapes. The artist has collected hair from numerous beauty salons over the years. Its diversity from anonymous donors carries each person’s DNA, which remains intact even after death. Hence, the use of hair in the “Luna Window” installation exemplifies a human condition that exists even throughout the most pressing situations.

The Venezuela-born American artist has, for the past fifteen years, created alternate ambiguities with her wall art and installations, focusing on beauty, poverty and the environment. “The Last Tree”, an impact environmental installation, debuted this summer at the ISE Cultural Foundation in Soho. Another significant installation centering on poverty, “Hung Out In The Projects,” was shown at the Morean Art Center in St Petersburg and helped earn Reingold a 2010 Florida Fellowship. Other recent exhibits on this theme include “Flesh Art,” Jersey City University, NJ; “Robes,” College of St Elizabeth, NJ, and “Media Mix X4” at Art Lot, Brooklyn, NY. More at www.babsreingold.com.