Smart Art Press

Published in conjunction with the first full career survey of Los Angeles artist Lunna Menoh, which was mounted by Track 16 Gallery in 2006, Lunna Menoh: 1988-2006 was created in collaboration with award winning designer Stuart Smith. Including an essay by exhibition curator Kristine McKenna, the catalogue features full color images from all Menoh’s art-making practices, which include painting, sculpture, performance art, and video. Central to the book are Menoh’s subversive one-of-a-kind sculptural garments. In the Surrealist tradition, these wearable artworks are at turns witty, diabolical, and unabashedly beautiful. The Magical Story Teller Dress, for instance, is a mechanized gown with a full skirt that incorporates several picture frames; as the wearer weaves her tale, paintings in the picture frames shift to illustrate the story. Men’s Wardrobe is a clothing rack of men’s wear that’s been stripped down to nothing but the seams, and Which Room Do You Want to Get Into? is a bright yellow jumper inset with fantasy boxes evocative of work by Joseph Cornell. Also included are several pieces from Menoh’s Dirty Shirt Collar, project, which includes a line of clothing fashioned entirely from dirty shirt collars, and a series of painted portraits of her favorite dirty collars.

32 pages, Softcover, 8 1/2×5 1/2 inches, 2006

Exhibition Link