Jo Ann Callis
"Early Color"

Exhibition: 8 March – 28 April, 2018

Shown for the first time in 2014 at the ROSEGALLERY in Santa Monica, the series "Early Color" by Jo Ann Callis (b. 1940, USA) was produced in 1976-1977 in Los Angeles at the home of the artist. The subtle, sensual series evokes the pleasures and traps of domestic life, deftly using contrasting and often banal textures – silk, leather, but also duct tape, honey and taut string crisscrossing the model’s skin – to provoke an “odd arousal” with images that are radically different from the commercial and erotic imagery of the time. Producing this work at the height of the women’s rights movement, Callis does not describe the series as politically engaged, saying that she was “more concerned with making work that was strong in its own right, rather than using it to make a statement.” Jo Ann Callis is the 1990 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship.