Kate Gilmore at ICA-U of Penn, September 5 – December 7, 2008
The value of art is that it expresses the sentiments of a diverse group of people. How ultimately we all want the same thing. Go to the ICA website and watch the short film. At first I experience discomfort, then realizing that what I was looking at, metaphorically was my own struggle.
The dogged persistence of Gilmore’s protagonists suggests the obsessive behavior that can characterize daily efforts to cope with high expectations. These dolled-up women seem desperate for success, love, or attention—desires traditionally bound up with gender and the condition of artmaking. In all of her projects, Gilmore strives for compositional perfection, and her incongruous party clothes are always perfectly coordinated with the installation itself.