Corey K. Lamb: Maiden
San Francisco鈥擟ombining a bright, rich paint palette with cartoonish figures, Corey Lamb imbues weighty societal questions with a wry sense of humor in his fourth solo exhibition with Hashimoto Contemporary, Maiden. The artist explores Western archetypes of women and their sociological and biological double bind: to procreate as the fair maiden or abstain as the old maid. Linking existentialism and eroticism, Lamb attempts to reframe our relationship to sex and sexuality, urging viewers to evaluate how cultural attitudes towards this often taboo subject form personal values, identities, and fates.
While leaving crumbs of irony, Lamb approaches these new paintings with honesty, vulnerability, and earnestness. Each piece depicts an initial moment of attraction, courtship, transformation, and failure that compose the maiden archetype鈥檚 life cycle. Skulls and skeletons act as the old maid鈥檚 memento mori, reminding viewers of the maiden鈥檚 social death brought on by biological pressures. Limp figures experiencing 鈥渕elancholic deflation鈥� push against constructed systems rooted in nature, throwing punches that land like pillows. Together, the works in Maiden unpack the point of view of entitled and disappointed men, fearful of the women who break from the archetype.
San Francisco鈥擟ombining a bright, rich paint palette with cartoonish figures, Corey Lamb imbues weighty societal questions with a wry sense of humor in his fourth solo exhibition with Hashimoto Contemporary, Maiden. The artist explores Western archetypes of women and their sociological and biological double bind: to procreate as the fair maiden or abstain as the old maid. Linking existentialism and eroticism, Lamb attempts to reframe our relationship to sex and sexuality, urging viewers to evaluate how cultural attitudes towards this often taboo subject form personal values, identities, and fates.
While leaving crumbs of irony, Lamb approaches these new paintings with honesty, vulnerability, and earnestness. Each piece depicts an initial moment of attraction, courtship, transformation, and failure that compose the maiden archetype鈥檚 life cycle. Skulls and skeletons act as the old maid鈥檚 memento mori, reminding viewers of the maiden鈥檚 social death brought on by biological pressures. Limp figures experiencing 鈥渕elancholic deflation鈥� push against constructed systems rooted in nature, throwing punches that land like pillows. Together, the works in Maiden unpack the point of view of entitled and disappointed men, fearful of the women who break from the archetype.
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Combining a bright, rich paint palette with cartoonish figures, Corey Lamb imbues weighty societal questions with a wry sense of humor in his fourth solo exhibition with Hashimoto Contemporary, Maiden.
The introduction of Web 2.0, along with deregulated internet forums, seemed to create a pressure cooker type microcosm of misogynistic spaces where lamentations about women 鈥済atekeeping鈥� their reproductive power run rampant.
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