Dark ContinentsBy Lyra Kilston
Published: October 1, 2008
 
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Akinci, the Netherlands
Hadassah Emmerich, "Highlights" (2008). Acrylic, ink, watercolor, spray paint, and linocut on paper, 54 x 80 in.
October 2008 Field Guide
Dark Continents at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Miami)
"Civilization is what makes you sick," declared Paul Gauguin, whose legendary search for an antidote led him to Tahiti and the Marquesas, where he made painting after painting of brown-skinned beauties reclining luxuriously amid sumptuous flora. More than 100 years after his death, that urge to find salvation in the arms of an exotic, “natural” woman is given sharp scrutiny in "Dark Continents," an exhibition showcasing eight female artists from Europe and North America, from rising stars such as Paulina Olowska, Ida Exblad, and Hadassah Emmerich to established artists like Marlene McCarty. The work collected here draws from idealized images of indigenous peoples; goddess mythology; spurious ethnological research; and, in McCarty’s exquisitely detailed ballpoint pen drawings, the evolutionary link between humans and apes. As on the Miami beach just beyond the venue, palm trees, snaking vines, and nearly nude women abound, but here, at least, it’s to wittily rebuke tropes of tropical paradises and exoticism in art. "Dark Continents" is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami from September 26, 2008—November 9, 2008. "Dark Continents" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' October 2008 Table of Contents.
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