Marie Baldwin’s research in and around pop culture has in Fantasia II (Live the Dream) brought her to visual source material from couple’s resorts in the Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Reaching heights in popularity after World War II, and surely playing a role in the baby boom that followed, couple’s resorts and their accompanying advertisements promised romantic getaways replete with leisure activity and a rekindling of amorous flames. Baldwin’s attention has specifically landed on advertisements from the late 1980’s and 90’s, at a time when the resorts could use some rekindling of their own. Through tight cropping and a mingling of disparate textiles, she brings a hyper-sensualization to her imagery that she offers through two different points of viewing - one more public, and one more private. The first, more public, view presents a suggested scene in the tradition of narrative folding screens. This screen however can be circumnavigated, with the reverse side giving the viewer an opportunity to consider a haptic legibility of this object, and its connection between the bodies imaged and the artist’s body which built their representation.

Full press release linked here.

Click to read review in Newcity Art.