Imagine a ménage à trois between a suburban thrift store, a midcentury modern furniture salon, and a sex shop—the love children born of such a hot-’n’-heavy session might be Trish Tillman’s sculptures. The artist’s current exhibition includes eleven deliciously queered, carefully composed objects. Longhorns, horsehair, metal studs, tassels—Tillman’s decorative references are eclectic but with a Texan flair, and ready for all manner of action with their helpful orifices and prongs.
Her wall-mounted modular pieces seem like headboards from the world’s kinkiest hotel. Afterschool Locker (all works 2017) is anchored by something fin-like wrapped in vinyl and hand-printed with Dioresque, graffiti-like scribbles. A pink wooden hook in the shape of a tulip protrudes from the base; two hanks of thick black horsehair, threaded with silvery chains, sprout from either side. In Housekeeping, the fabric cover of an ironing board is partly unzipped, its golden suede skin exposed to a phallic, gold-plated base. Tillman’s libidinous objects are rife with absurdity: At the center of First Class Quick Fix, a rainbow assortment of dog leashes pokes through a pipe that rests inside of a luxe and vaguely orthopedic-looking cushion.
In Good Morning Farewell, Tillman abandons the readymade for the rococo. Here, she tops a geometric teal and metallic-leather spaceship—flattened—with an expressionistic resin crown. This extra bit of ornament, however, is a needless diversion. Her work with familiar forms extends an important lineage of feminist assemblages, from Lynda Benglis’s cunt-celebrating “Peacock” works of the 1970s to Liz Collins’s fabric installations, complete with bungee cords, waterfalls of fringe, and unrepentant eroticism.
--Wendy Vogel