The Letdown
Erin Morrison solo exhibition
Ochi Projects
October 28 - December 9, 2017
© Ochi Projects, 2017
Press Release download: PDF
Ochi Projects is pleased to present The Letdown by Los Angeles-based artist Erin Morrison. The
exhibition is on view from October 28 – December 9, 2017 with an opening reception Saturday,
October 28, 6-9pm.
This presentation of relief sculptures made in complementary pairs, created by Morrison’s unique
process combining both printmaking and casting techniques, brings to the forefront a conversation
between artifact and replica. Referencing Etruscan frescoes, early Puritan Gravestones, and more
directly the gestures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s dynamic figurative works, Morrison recasts these
symbols with the industrial material of gypsum cement, alluding to the way artifacts are imitated if not
outright looted — their original purpose and significance lost or misinterpreted. Through this process of
dislocation, artifacts or replicas often take on a new kind of cultural significance where their possession
and display is meant to indicate status and wealth.
Do these objects that imitate artifacts become kitsch when a “faux” material meant to imply this sense
of value fails to do so? Imitation gold and silver, for instance, are often employed in this effort and are
featured predominantly in the exhibition. Recalling a piece of jewelry Morrison had in the 90s, two large
panels depict evil eye chains in gold and silver leaf. The evil eye, originally a talisman considered to
have magical powers of protection, is depicted with broken links, revealing its artificiality, refuting its
symbolic properties and transforming it into a cheap trinket.
Morrison further mines this moment of failed expectation. The Letdown, sharing their title with the
exhibition, are two panels of milky-colored recurring wave patterns. The works are named after the
physiological response that occurs during breastfeeding; the letdown involves the release of oxytocin
(the “love” hormone) strengthening the bond of mother to child. The works recall a memory of
simultaneously experiencing the letdown breastfeeding her son while feeling extreme despair watching
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign concession speech. This bittersweet moment triggered a heightened awareness of injustice so profound that it called her to action, altering her sense of place
and duty in the world. Turning the waves into guilded flames, she carries this experience of
complicated emotion into Ecstasy, two panels depicting gesturing hands. Though hands are a
repeated trope in Morrison’s work, here they specifically reference Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint
Teresa. Teresa, (one of the few female saints) accounted to have experienced a love of God with a
pain “so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain,
that I could not wish to be rid of it.” This conflation of the body’s letdown while feeling emotionally let
down, waves of euphoria and waves of pain, inform Morrison’s understanding of high and low, unmet
expectation, false narrative, and the power of imagery and symbolic gesture.
Despite the cynicism required to grasp the concept of kitsch, Morrison nevertheless strives for a level
of repose in her pieces. In two final panels Morrison recreates a souvenir pendant that depicts a
landscape. She recognizes that while it may have sentimental value it is not a piece of fine jewelry.
Interrogating and transforming the souvenir into art object through her labor-intensive process,
Morrison seeks a sincere means of making something well-crafted and whole.
