Marnie Weber
The Dollhouse
October 19 through November 23, 2002
Fredericks Freiser Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of sculpture and photographic collage by Marnie Weber. This will be the artist’s third one-person exhibition in New York.
The Dollhouse Statement:
I’ve been working on a large (6’ x 10’) eleven room surrealist dollhouse for a year and a half. I wanted to create a story book house which represented the architecture of a dream. There is a snow-filled room with a frozen pond, a fall room filled with autumn leaves, an ocean tide bringing in a sailboat bed up in the attic, a waterfall pouring down the stairs of the grand entry, the dust room with its contents covered in sheets, a trophy room with a herd of animal heads mounted on the walls and many more rooms of various décor. The rooms were then photographed and blown up as c-prints and then collaged on. The inhabitants are ghost-like women of various ages most of whom are in party dress mingling with animals and objects. The actual rooms of the dollhouse contain no dolls but are depicted as figures from another reality represented in the collages. The rooms become stage sets for moments of struggle, passion, calm, exploration or nothingness frozen in time.
By working with miniatures I began to understand the extreme obsession in which all miniaturists work. Every detail becomes extremely important and then when blown up all decisions seem monumental. Miniaturism fulfils the need to manipulate and control a world all ones own. We become god-like and everything must be perfect.
Love displacement takes place and we ignore our family, friends and children by returning to our own childhood to fix and wrong-doings through the world of miniatures. Feelings are anthropomorphized through the animals and actions never taken are expressed through the figures caught in a moment. Growing up is hard to do when living in a dollhouse.
Fredericks Freiser Gallery is located at 504 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information and/or photographs please contact the gallery by telephone at (212) 633-6555, fax at (212) 367-9502, or email fredreicksfreiser@nyc.rr.com. Visit us at the end of the month at our new Website fredericksfreisergallery.com.