Millie Wilson at Jose Freire - soft sculpture and installation art - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Art in America, Sept, 1994 by P.C. Smith

Millie Wilson constructs objects that reflect stereotypes of lesbianism. Sometimes the objects are presented in installations, at other times as series such as the "Museum of Lesbian Dreams." The 1994 works at Jose Freire all respond to the well-publicized case of Aileen Wuornos, a lesbian who has been sentenced to death for killing seven men while working as a roadside prostitute in Florida. The trial of Wuornos, who claimed that she was in each instance acting in self-defence, was marked by attacks branding her as a man-hating "demon-dyke."

Wilson alludes to Wuornos's case with Warholian detachment, creating campy Pop icons for the Wigstock generation. Daytona Death Angel, for example, is a 5-foot-tall, double-coiffed mass of synthetic blond hair, braided (by wig stylist Lee Burnette) to suggest female pubic anatomy. The "Autopsy" series--seven bucket seats upholstered with seven different kinds of garish faux fur--alludes to the seven dead men. A bowlful of yellow happy-face buttons, on sale for a dollar each, featured the cliche grin composed from letters spelling out a Wuornos quote, "evil fucking planet."

Other works are more complex. Beard, for example, consists of a metallic Harley-Davidson sissy bar sitting on a formica pedestal; it is outfitted with a mannequin head upholstered in mustard-color fabric, a fur collar and a strapped-on rawhide beard. Perhaps oddest is the "Chest Hair" series, seven wall-mounted aluminum boxes, reminiscent of works by Judd but with clumps of theatrical-prop chest-hair clipped on. This collection of pathetic "scalps," mounted in vague heart shapes on the gleaming metal boxes, suggests a ridiculously revulsive fetishism.

Like Robert Gober's concurrent show at Paula Cooper, Wilson's work exemplifies an emerging genre, the fabricated found object, that is the sculptural equivalent of the staged photograph. As with Gober, Wilson often recalls Surrealism at its most theatrical. Though her work largely avoids personal emotion and conviction, Wilson's irreverent, sensationalistic, avowedly "queer" humor yielded a show that was quintessentially of the '90s.