Larrie is pleased to present Gristle, Liz Hopkins’ first solo exhibition opening May 5, 2020. In Gristle, Hopkins extends her practice beyond the realm of practical functionality to combine her furniture pieces with a suite of new collages and sculptural works.
Her materials are humble but she lavishes them with time and the considered pressure of her hands. Hopkins’ inquiry into 60s and 70s lesbian, pulp fiction paperbacks and their male ghostwriters reveals a history of hetero-erotic fantasies projected onto lesbianism, with narratives devoid of any true portrayal or celebration of the female identity.
In Gristle, Hopkins disarms these stereotype-riddled polemics in kind. Collage works of coffee, meat juice, wine, and paint on canvas combine with two new sculptures, adopting the language of the male cannon only to act as double agents. Armed with the jocular confidence of male artists Franz West and Joseph Hoffman, Hopkins creates her own uniquely erotic environment whose zenith is an inhabitable fiberglass womb structure bedded in darkness and hay. By returning to the beginning, presenting the fallacy and redirecting the narrative, Hopkins’ asks us to consider the author of our beliefs and to scrutinize past narratives, using these histories as maps for our present.
