Into Leather

Mandy Greer's spillingly elaborate crochet-work takes over rooms and rooms at BAM, though I am drawn to a much less voluminous piece. Skin Tight (1999) is the many-branched stump of a laurel tree, sewn up with leather from women's vintage kidskin gloves. While the majority of this exhibit, "Dara alla Luce" ("to give to the light"), is populated with mythic-seeming animals—you may remember a downed white stag from Bumbershoot, leaking velvety red entrails—this quieter work seems to occupy the margin between plant and animal. The use of kidskin gloves evokes a certain prim, ladylike protection from a more animal existence. The leather, after being boiled onto the wood (as the wall label explains), has shrunk, and is in fact skintight. Stretched over the knuckles and curves of the stump, the glove leather, despite the visible buttons and stitching, is returned to its animal origins. This sculpture possesses a strong sensuality (tight leather, stretched stitches), and seems to comment on our own animal existence: how, perhaps, our very need to deny it only makes our animal nature more apparent.