ANDREA SCHWARTZ

09.02.09

Andrea Schwartz Gallery: Gugger Petter.

Comment by AB: According to the instruction manual, the subjects of Danish artist Gugger Petter's remarkable woven countenances are founded in traditional Christian depictions of the Virgin Mary. Appropriately titled "Female Head/Madonna," this series of works "expands on those influences and takes inspiration from Byzantine icons and mosaics." I ask Petter what newspapers she uses to accent her art and she tells me The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, which prompts me to hypostulate that she may be among the few surviving humans who still find the Chronicle useful (although I fondly recall the heyday daze when fog addled Ess Eff lived for Herb Caen, myself included). 

Uh oh. What's this I hear? My pesky antiquarian muse, buzz-bombing my ear like a manic mosquito, agrees with me that Petter's art astounds now, but hastens to add that not only is it hard to dust, the temporal nature of the medium also renders it susceptible to the inexorable eventualities of time. Not to fret, my darlings. Plexi enclosures would likely alleviate that.

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