RITA MCBRIDE: WERKSHOW
DIRK SNAUWAERT
The spacious installations of up-and-coming sculptor Rita McBride refer to architecture--as a model, as a repertoire of forms, and as social reality. Her work explores questions of ideology in art and architecture--playing with the modernist legacies of LeCorbusier and the Bauhaus group, among others--but always with a sense of irony and aesthetics. In works such as "Toyota", "Parking Garage", "Two Towers,'' and ''Arena," McBride has recreated functional everyday objects--cars, cooling towers, chairs--using materials that render these objects useless. Moving beyond the post-Duchamp tradition of "ready-mades," McBride explores how our perceptions are structured according to certain accepted relationships between form and content. "Rita McBride: Werkshow"--the most extensive publication to date on McBride's work--is a comprehensive look at McBride's oeuvre, featuring her large-scale installations as well as her smaller sculptures.
