Seattle P-I April 23, 2004
by Regina Hackett
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Seattle Weekly April 14, 2004
by Elise Richman
READ ARTICLE AT RIGHT > >
The Stranger April 4, 2004
Mandy Greer's Fairy Tale
by Emily Hall
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The Stranger Jan 29, 2004
by Emily Hall
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The Stranger September 10, 2003
by Emily Hall
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Seattle Weekly
April 14 - 20, 2004
By Elise Richman
VISUAL ARTS PICK
FRANCESCA BERRINI AND MANDY GREER
Whimsy can be a dangerous path, but Berrini and Greer manage
to be fanciful without succumbing to the sappy, precious,
limp, self-indulgent, or sentimental. Berrini constructs her
intricate topographies with loving care. She makes the real
unreal by snipping maps of actual places into small squares
and reconfiguring them, mosaic-like, into unknown realms,
maintaining the abstract language of maps even as she loses
the labels. Giotto-blue forms become gulfs; dense, jumbled
lines designate population centers; and a sun-soaked, golden
desert is an unidentified "Oasis." There is something both
anarchic and utopian in Berrini"s scrambled fantasy lands;
they are what Robert Hughes called "landscapes of pleasure."
In the gallery's long front room, Greer's sculptures and
assemblages, made from cast-off materials like thrift-store
fabric and cardboard scraps, are incongruously opulent,
fiercely frilly. Her allegorical installation features a
Parrot Princess and Wolf Prince and what appears to be their
grand, snow-white matrimonial suite, composed of a yarn pom-
pom chandelier suspended over a spiraling rag rug. The
resplendent green parrot amorously perches on a sequin-
encrusted branch; her beak glitters and an oversized bow
festoons her throat. The prince, a mangy, decidedly off-
white knight in shining armor, is so fetching (in a
reprobate kind of way), you just want to pinch his shaggy
jowls. Delicate, crocheted tassels of drool hang from his
jaw. His bust extends from a curvaceous frame decked with
pleated layers of fabric and lace, tenderly sewn, like a
shrine to true love.
Priceless Works Gallery, 619 North 35th St., Suite 100,
206-
349-9943,
noon-6 p.m. Thurs.-Sun. Ends Sun. May 2.
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