Leona Christie: Ataraxy 
Luisa Kazanas  

Leona Christie's "Ataraxy" is a marriage of science fiction fantasy and domestic comedy merged to form a hybrid world that presents and contains highly complex ideas, values, and meanings concerning the organization of social space and women's roles within it. Christie's sensuous ballpoint and gouache drawings in baby blues and charcoal grays create a bulbous, whimsical backdrop of New Frontier utopianism for a brigade of nubile femmes who look to be from the troubled paradise of the 1950's. In "Conversation of the Pacifiers" an assembly of demure, corpulent girls kneel at the feet of a comrade, sitting in a globular craft and gazing into an orb while a vessel of svelte, bodacious babes shuttles past. Nearby, in "Internicine #2 the troupe reappears as a procession reminiscent of synchronized bathing beauties, who glamour glide through space. One can't help but think of such campy sci-fi movie classics as "The Fantastic Voyage," or "Barbarella" when viewing Christie's work. In a more sublime approach, Luisa Kazanas's icy, flawless sculptures, including one of a taxidermy bird outfitted in a cast white urethane space suite and encased within a glass dome seem to nod more accurately toward our culture's future in a space-age of bio-technology and genetic engineering. Her prophetic take on human advancement shows to be especially chilling in the work "Untitled (Diaphram)." A large round frame of cast urethane and glass displays a sweet, yet macabre flesh-toned fetus with fully developed trunk, legs and feet, but only nubs where the arms and head should be. The glazed, gleaming, synthetic surfaces of these sculptures are both seductive and repulsive at the same time - much like the cyborgian world of tomorrow that promises to render skin obsolete.

jennjoygallery 
49 Geary Street, Suite 410, San Francisco 
Tues. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 
(415) 398-2040 (Megan Wilson)