by Mona Longpre
“Cockeyed”, a survey of work by Rachel Lachowicz created between 1991-2026, currently on view at Shoshana Wayne Gallery is very red, and best when at its reddest.
Lachowitz, chair of the art department at Claremont Graduate University, is affiliated with 1990s Lipstick Feminism, and that lipstick is heavily on display here. Traditional symbols of femininity—lipstick, heels, sex appeal—are here adopted as tools for empowerment, or at least reflection.
A column of plastic and glass apples sets the tone—each fruit sits stacked atop another, totem-style in a concentric circle while still not fully set, allowing the cooling columns to solidify themselves against their neighbors. As in all the show’s best pieces, Lachowicz’s monochromes activate the whiteness of the walls, as the snow surrounding Snow White is activated by the redness of the glossy and hypersoporofic apple.
On the left wall, Monochrome Red (1991) a grid of red cocks cast in lipstick wax protrude from the wall in grid pattern. More interesting than the wax casting, is watching groups of women standing in front of the grid analyzing these offerings and their various shapes and sizes. Despite the fact a similar spectacle could be seen in any sex store, I am inclined, somehow, to give Lachowicz credit. There is some kind of vision in offering an opportunity for the public to self-consciously confront disembodied dicks in an art way.
As in so many red things, desire and danger here intertwine. The back wall contains Untitled (one month late), 2024—an installation of lipstick-covered wire hangers, saved from mere didacticism by the energetic electrical-diagram-esque linework created by their composition. Likewise a lone boxing glove (Untitled (hit), 1997), lipsticked so heavily it seems cast in wax, lies limply signifying on its pedestal.
When Lachowitz strays from red, she strays from these resonances. It’s hard to think of a conceptual artist active after the mid-’80s who couldn’t have made Blue Dog, (2004-2009) a pair of small, kitschy toy canines—other than the fact that they’ve been made blue with blue lipstick.
Overall, though, the work is dazzling, and the suggestion that a woman might reasonably be interested-, and perhaps even complicit-, in sexual activity is a welcome tonic in these repulsive times.
Image: Courtesy Shoshana Wayne Gallery