Crafting RomanceApril 10 - May 31, 2009 ATHICA
Athens Institute for Contemporary Art
"Taking on the age-old theme of love, Crafting Romance explores the articulation of romance and desire in the visual arts. It focuses especially on the intersection between once-separate categories: the fine and the decorative arts and high and low visual culture...dealing with sex and the private, domestic realm is Nora Rabins... Bundt and Angel features two objects from the kitchen: a metal cake frame bearing a pink, plastic "cake" and an empty angel food cake form. Placed on steel pedestals, the two take on an anthropomorphic guise. Situated so that "Angel" is on the verge of penetrating "Bundt," whose pink cake resembles an orifice, the pose mimics both heterosexual and homosexual acts of love, as if to call attention to the staged nature of passive/ active roles. Playing on the gendered associations of such domestic accoutrements, Bundt and Angel...play[s] on an already present sensuality and decadence in foods such as cakes and pastries. The cake form takes on phallic aspects in ... the angel of Rabins' sculptural pair-with the disturbing implication that [it] can be cut apart with a... housewife's knife. "
--Exhibition catalogue: Co-curators Rebecca Ray Brantley & Nathanael Roesch
"Together at Last: Coupling is demonstrated in "Bundt and Angel" by Nora Rabins, which presents cake molds as male and female parts poised for union, suggesting a primarily sexual relationship"
-Flagpole Magazine, Art Notes, May 15, 2009
"...though Nora Rabins' anthropomorphic found object construction, 'Bundt and Angel' calls for naughty interpretation, its overall comical nature renders it essentially genderless."
-Athens Banner-Herald, Marquee, May 7, 2009
