Untitled - Jana Sterbak

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This is another example ofthe customary Sterbakian duality. Both thete pieces ar€ seductive and repukive at one and the same tim€. They are bolh about desire and punishment about the pleasures and blows which a.company love, but in no way do they moralke. Neither is there evidence o{ any moraljsing in the morc recent worlc Attludet 1982 whereJana Sterbak leads us into the bedroom. Wetind the bedt madeup and nrewn with pillo\it/5 with embroidered pillovwases. But the busy hand which so meticulously woF ked all th6e stitches is not interested in sound slumber, but rather in 's€xual Jantasies', "reputation , 'greed' or 'disease", all concepts which have sexual connotations. 'Dis€ase" is not about "one night with Venus, a whole life with Mercury" as Carl von Ljnn6 put it but rather about AlDs, the curs€ oJ the late t\iventieth entury.,ana sterbak manaqes to treat even su
The dress was created at a time when art war going through an extremely 'clean' phase. This wat the hey-day of 'Neo'Geo" painting, befor€ the Wall Street crash, and the art world was rjding on a high. At the same time New York, where Jana Sterbak was tiving at th€ time, was abo inhabited by countless homelers people. (8) The .ontradictionr ot a society which displayr such extreme wealth that it can only be matded by an equally extreme poverty could not but appeal to the artist,s keen sens€ of paradox. When the pie.e was exhibited in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa jn 1991 it created a scandal in the news" hungry local media. The artht - and the museum - were accused of misusing public funds and tood which could have been dinributed to the starving. The artist's only comment on this was the following laconic statement: 'What is lacking (in Canada) is not food but a potiticat and social desire to distribute the necessary means {or everybodyto purchase it.. (9) It is perhaps in h€r choice of mat€riah that there is most evidence ot the link between Jana Sterbak and loseph Beuyt whose work aroused her interest a5 early as the 1970r, panly because his art was so different from anything else being produced in North America.(10) lana Sterbak user neither lat, felt nor copp€r, but perhaps the freedom and natural eare with which she ures ,'non-artistic' materials can be traced back to these origins, One of her latest works is,like Vanitas: Flesh Dtess for an Albino Anorectic, m6de of an edible matetial. Catacombes, 1992, ir a human skeleton made of extra bitter chocolate. In Golem, the human organs were moulded by the hand of the artisL but here the bones are carts of actual sketeton parts. This piece ako d€ah with the Memerto moritheme. 8ut just tike an exhausted sketeton after a whofe njght's dance ma.abre, the inedible pa( of the body which any sel{-respecting cannibal would reject is here prerent€d as a delicatessen. Not onty the chocolate is bta.k - so ir the artist! During the last ten yea6 Jana Sterbak has exposed many o{ the funclions ofthe body and soul, both in relation to the individual and to society. Elack humour and a senre of the absurd have always been k€en weapont jun as the metaphor has always been an €ffective vehicle for the inexpressible. Jana Sterbak demonstrater quite clearly that these w€apons are still elfective - ev€n in the context of art. 24
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Page 26 and 27: 1) lana ltetbak, 'Artin Text', in t
Page 29: 3 Remote Control t. 1989
Page 33: Shrinking Lenin. 1991 Krwpende Leni
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Page 43 and 44: Seduction Couch. 1986 Perforeret rt
Page 45 and 46: 'sept SculpteuB Canadiens', Mus6e d
Page 47 and 48: mentwith Abstraction". The New Yotk
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Untitled - Jana Sterbak

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