Play on Fashion: mixed media installation

Karen Meninno
Monica Mitchell

Exhibition Dates: March 26-May 11, 2014
Artists’ Talk and Reception: Tuesday, April 1, 2-4pm
in the Hess Gallery, Pine Manor College

The Hess Gallery at Pine Manor College is pleased to present Play on Fashion. Witty, hilarious, and unusually over-the-top, Karen Meninno and Monica Mitchell give free rein to their passion for fashion in a new installation encompassing drawing, sculpture, and painting. Playing with the idea and actuality of fashion, the duo use vibrant pattern, texture, and color. Monica re-creates Velásquez’s Las Meninas in a surreal pastiche of contemporary materials, as well as an installation of truly dangerous shoes.. Karen considers the contemporary fashion world in an art context—inspired by designers such as Christian Lacroix--but her designs clothe aliens as well as people. Fashion becomes play, and play creates fashion in this dizzying alternate universe.

About the Artists
Monica Mitchell uses fashion to develop personal associations and reflections about class, gender roles, and consumerism. Her brightly colored patterned fabric, tulle, military camouflage patterning and duct tape bring to the viewers’ attention the ideas of masking and disorientation. New Delhi-born Londoner Karen Meninno brings her global imagination to bear on fashions from this and other galaxies, and creates new sculpture from fabrics custom-printed with her own drawings and photographs.