ART
BRYN MCCONNELL: LOOKED
by Feb 29, 2012
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BOMB Magazine
(EXCERPT)
For the closing exhibition party at the Frontrunner Gallery on a February 2nd, McConnell participated in a 13-minute staged piece with the Push Pops, a Bushwick-based performance group led by Katie Cercone and Elisa Garcia de la Huerta. According to their Go! Push Pops website, the Push Pops are a “radical, queer feminist art collective…geared towards engendering ‘Embodied Feminism’…[and] concerned with the expenditure and conservation of the self in relation to the Other.” Ms. Cercone and Ms. Garcia show this by adding a third libero member to vary each performance. On February 2nd, Bryn McConnell was that member.
Bryn McConnell performing with the Push Pops. Photo © Leah Overstreet and the Frontrunner Gallery.
Push Pop member. Photo © Leah Overstreet and the Frontrunner Gallery.
“The main thing I could contribute [to the collective] would be my concept,” says McConnell, who originally described the group as “Feminist Dada,” one that in performance “usually ends up getting aggressive or somehow a little bit explosive.”
The February performance took place against the back-drop of McConnell’s paintings. A triangle made of tape marked each of the girls’ places, where they walked out with scissors and chopped off pieces of each other’s clothes, drawing on each other’s faces with bright pink-red lipstick. At one point, McConnell, who was originally dressed in lacy black skirt, barely had more than a bra and rags on, while the other members had lipstick all over their faces.
The Push Pops. Photo © Leah Overstreet and the Frontrunner Gallery.
But somehow it worked. At times, the girls even looked like McConnell’s paintings had come to life.
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