Reynolds
Puki Punditry Studio 10
On View Sept 3- Sept 27
Opening Reception: Friday, September 5, 6:00-9:00 PM
Hours: Wed- Sat. 2:00- 6:00 PM
Special Screening: Friday, Sept 19 6-9 PM The Puki Panoptic video 15 minutes at 7:00
The Puki Monsters were birthed in the midst of the nineties culture wars, under the Hercules statue in Kassel, Germany, as a critique of phallic monumentality. Puki means vagina in Filipino. As small watercolors that fit in carry -on luggage, they have romped through art history, exposing it’s hidden, while subverting masterpieces. Ready to install guerilla style, they stop to admire non hegemonic references. Originally the watercolors were revenge romps as Reynolds created a feminist demonology. Later, mirroring her own Motherhood, they revealed the fallacy in the phallocracy, by playing with the imagery of the Madonna, while sparing no religious representations of the saintly mother. Finally, as Anonymous was a woman, so was the Allegory, a major pictorial practice of colonializing cultures. Allegorical Pukis appropriate the imagery to reimagine the forms as chimeras.
The Puki Procession was started in conjunction with David Medalla to protest the invasion of Iraq, and destruction of cultural antiquities. It is a participatory performance with the paintings on silk banners, which are paraded to protest monuments, museums as mausoleums, and honor private places in public gardens. Reveling and revealing the grotesque, the Pukis have performed in Brazil, Chile, London, Liverpool, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Brooklyn and Peekskill N.Y., and in Freehold and Newark, New Jersey. They have been in one person exhibitions in Brazil, Liverpool, and twice at Studio Ra in Rome. Pukis use the public pulpit to create a praxis of pop propaganda: a sort of visual punditry.
Reynolds studied painting at Sarah Lawrence with Richard Pousette-Dart, political theory with Eqbal Ahmad, and graduated with a concentration in Women’s History. She also holds a BFA and MFA from School of Visual Arts. She has worked as an Artist Educator for 25 years as Museum Artist /Educator in New York museums, most recently at The Brooklyn Museum, where she started as a Galley/Studio Educator in 2007.
Previous Puki Processions are on YouTube; reynoldsnart including The Puki Procession 2004, La Pucelle Puki 2008, Puki Pacifista 2009, Antiquarian Puki Prayers 2011, and Puki Pollination 2018. Art Cake is her first one-person exhibition of the Pukis in New York.
Reynolds, Liberty Puki, 12 x 16 inches
Reynolds, Majolica MOMster, 12 x 16 inches
Reynolds, Playful Puki, 12 x 9 inches
Reynolds, Power Puki, 16 x 12 inches
Reynolds, Puki paradę, Brazil