High meets Low: Esthetic Theory at Girls’ Club Annex Space - postedby FFAB

High meets Low: Guest exhibit Esthetic Theory explores the coalescence of contemporary art and cosmetic esthetics Esthetic Theory at Girls’ Club Annex Space

117 NE 2 Street, Fort Lauderdale
www.girlsclubcollection.org/esthetic-theory
Reception: Saturday, May 30, 6-9pm during Last Saturday Artwalk
On view from May 27-30, 2015, 1-5pm and by appt

Fort Lauderdale -- Girls’ Club presents a Esthetic Theory, a guest exhibit curated by artist Rosemarie Romero, in the Girls’ Club Annex Space. 

Esthetic Theory is a group exhibition that functions like a full service salon and spa. The exhibit consists of artists whose work explores the high impact, glossy and glittery materials, forms, and processes that evoke and celebrate feminine excess, pleasure, cosmetic artifice, bodywork, sexuality, and the performativity of gender. 

'Low' culture aesthetic practices, 'high art' conventions, and spiritual signifiers are appropriated and manipulated to create hybrid works that blur the line between art commodity, fetish objects, craft, kitsch, fashion, entertainment and gendered extensions of the body. 

Artwork by local and national artists Sarah Beth Woods, Helen Maurene Cooper, Orlando Estrada, Crystal Pearl, Rosemarie Romero, and Jill Weisberg. Sarah Beth Woods creates hair braided loofah sculptures that explore gender performativity and sensuality. Helen Maurene Cooper" explores pattern and design through wallpaper instillation; with her original nail photographs (collaboration Naughty Nailz and Naillicious) as source material she has created a site specific custom nail wallpaper. Orlando Estrada creates sculpture, and works with massage and healing crystals as a method of exploration into body work and LGBTQ issues. Crystal Pearl makes video art that delves into Latina subjectivity and embodiment via fashion, pleasure, and excess. Jill Weisberg uses nail polish on vintage adult magazine pages that blurs between figuration and abstraction, repulsion and desire. 

Artist and curator Rosemarie Romero creates abstract paintings inspired by urban nail art, airbrush, ornamentation, & cosmetic geometry. She will be offering on site manicures, massage, gossip, and 'chusmeria' by her alter ego Porn Nail$. 

Pulling together artists whose work straddles high and low art, the exhibit creates an interactive experience that places creative artistic practice adjacent to the traditional feminine practices of pampering and primping. Both rely on traditional and nontraditional notions of beauty, but often diverge in legitimacy within the art world and general social perceptions. 

The exhibit will be on view Wednesday May 27 to Friday May 29, with a Saturday reception May 30 from 6-9pm featuring live performance and interactive elements. Appointments will be on a first come first serve basis and include custom nail Art by Glynnus Nail Pro, Sara Beth Woods, Nail Pop LLC, and Porn Nail$. African hair braiding by Chicago stylist Fatima Traore. 

About Girls' Club 
Founded in 2006 by artist Francie Bishop Good and her husband David Horvitz, Girls' Club is a 501(c)3 foundation and alternative space, the only private collection in the world dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art by women. Cutting edge works in painting, drawing, photography and video are presented in curated, thematic exhibitions which also include works loaned from other collectors, and from galleries and artists. 

Artists represented in the Good/Horvitz collection are a diverse body of women - and some men - representing many ethnicities and nationalities. Girls' Club's facility is a dynamic, multi-functional building created by award-winning designer Margi Nothard of Glavovic Studio in Fort Lauderdale. 

Girls' Club's mission is to educate the public, nurture the careers of female artists, and to serve as a resource for art students and scholars, curators, and practicing artists. A special commitment is made to expose the work of local artists to a broader national and international audience. Girls' Club's website features a working online artist database with biographical information and relevant web links on artists in the collection, facilitating further study on the works and careers of contemporary women artists. Web projects by artists, interviews and texts by writers and a blog extends the presence of Girls' Club onto the worldwide web. 

Girls' Club is also committed to changing the lives of individuals in Broward County, and our programming reflects the special needs of women and girls. Girls' Club offers specialized workshops and activities in a variety of media for artists of all levels and abilities, and for children and families. 

More information at www.girlsclubcollection.org.