UNLIKELY ICONS

by James Scarborough

In Memorial Project, Jane Brucker sanctifies memories of individuals to foil the dehumanization of ready-to-wear ephemeral-ness and off-the-rack anonymity. She first collects articles of clothing and then stretches them around supports, whereupon she installs them on the wall-a kind of canvas, emotionally primed with memory. Brucker filters an Arts and Crafts sensibility through a Minimalist seriality to create quilted hyperlinks to recall an individual. Collectively the blocks of garments intone like a digital choir. Here, William Morris, Marcel Duchamp, and Donald Judd meet K-mart, Calvin Klein and the Salvation Army.

JAMES SCARBOROUGH is a curator and arts writer living in Los Angeles. He wrote about Jane Brucker’s work in NY ARTS Magazine and for the exhibition catalogue UNLIKELY ICONS at Laband Gallery, Loyola Marymount University in 2003.