RONA PONDICK: Works from the 1990s (Teeth)

December 4 - 6, 2020
VIP preview: December 2 - 4
Opening 7am PT, 10am ET

Steven Zevitas Gallery is pleased to present RONA PONDICK: Works from the 1990s (Teeth) at Art Basel Miami Beach 2020. This exhibition includes two sculptures and four drawings by Pondick from the 90s, a seminal time in her practice.

The two sculptures, Untitled Shoe (1995) and Red Platter (1995), along with a group of chattering teeth drawings, all part of the series Mouth Mouth (1993), focus on a key subject that first launched Pondick to international attention: teeth. These works were described in the New York Times as “Freudian vaudeville acts that are principally fruits of a desire to control her world and to invite the onlooker to their own interpretations.”

Since 1986, Pondick has used body fragments, either from her own body, or objects like teeth, that evoke or symbolize the body and its functions. Many people have written about her suggestive and elusive imagery, but it is hard to categorize her work. They are all pieces of our fantasies.

Pondick, herself, points to Franz Kafka as an influence. Parallels can be seen between her work and the situations created by the writer for his characters, in which contradictory emotions and humor co-exist. In a frequently referenced quote, the artist tells us, “I once found myself in a very funny position: I was sitting on a panel at the Whitney Museum and someone asked, ‘So why are you using teeth?’ I panicked, asking myself, ‘What do I say?’ And before I knew it, I’d told 200 people that I had an obsession: every time I was angry with someone, I wanted to bite them, and I wanted to see what would happen if I channeled that urge into my work. Afterwards, a blue-haired woman in a prim suit came up to me and said, ‘I know exactly what you’re feeling: when I gave birth to my baby I wanted to eat it. So, I went out and bought a suckling pig the size of my child and ate the whole thing.’”

To this day, Pondick continues to experiment in a way that shows us the deep-rooted contradictions of our psychological makeup—and the dark humor of these paradoxes. This grouping represents a groundbreaking period within Pondick's practice in which she broke the barrier between her work and her body. A master of many materials and techniques, her investigations are tied together with an unabashed fascination with the animalistic depths of the human psyche. It is with a consistent, perverse, and potent humor that Pondick continues to recite her biting punch lines. As viewers, we are the targets and the audience of this poetic absurdity- we sit in our cushioned seats, throats cut, laughing.

 RONA PONDICK (b. 1952) studied at Yale University School of Art. Since 1984 she has had over 48 solo exhibitions of her work in museums and galleries internationally, including Galleria d’Arte Moderna Bologna, Groninger Museum, Rupertinum Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, and the Israel Museum.

Her sculptures have been included in over 200 group exhibitions, including numerous biennales worldwide: the Whitney Biennial, Lyon Biennale, Johannesburg Biennale, Sonsbeek, and Venice Biennale. Pondick has participated in group exhibitions at museums internationally including the Mori Art Museum, Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, Museo de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Ca’Pesaro, Centre Pompidou, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Pera Museum, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Daimler Chrysler, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Two room-sized installations Little Bathers (1990-91), and Dirt Head (1997), are currently on view in an exhibition focused entirely on the mouth at the Kunstmuseum of Wolfsburg in Germany. The exhibition On Everyone’s Lips: From Pieter Bruegel to Cindy Sherman includes artists like Nauman, Picasso, Durer, Bosch, Bourgeois, and Pondick, among others.

Her work belongs to the collections of over 45 institutions worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan Library, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, San Francisco Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, and The Israel Museum.

Rona Pondick has received numerous awards and grants, including The American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award, Anonymous Was A Woman, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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