Gestures

Two screens of film about - and sometimes shot by - Claes Oldenburg, detailing his inspiration, his methods and his relationship with his partner Hannah Wilke.

Hello Boys documents a performance at the Gallery Gerald Piltzer in Paris. Seen through the glass of a large fish tank, Wilke, nude, performs a repertoire of studied erotic gestures to the accompaniment of rock music. Entrapped in her fish bowl, on display behind glass, she is both subject and object. Suggesting the iconic female figure of a mermaid, with its ambiguous implications of sexual power and powerlessness, Wilke explores the representation of female sexuality and the male gaze.

Hannah Wilke Through the Large Glass documents one of Wilke's most effective and well-known performances, in which she performs a deadpan striptease behind Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (also known as The Large Glass) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Dressed in a fedora and a white suit, and evoking the style of 1970s' fashion icons such as Helmut Newton and Yves Saint-Laurent, Wilke strikes a series of poses and then strips. She is seen through the glass of the Duchamp sculpture. In her self-conscious affectation of the often absurdist posturing of a fashion model, Wilke willfully uses her own image and her sexuality to confront the erotic representation of women in art history and popular culture.

Hannah Wilke, upon Tschinkel's suggestion, cuts fellow artist, Claes Oldenburg's hair, which is taped for Tschinkel's Manhattan Cable TV show, Inner-Tube Video. This memorable piece reflects a caring relationship.

In this haunting performance, Wilke conflates the private and the public as autobiographical theater. The audience "eavesdrops" on a series of phone messages intended for Wilke, recorded from her answering machine. This voice-over litany of messages becomes an intimate if one-sided narrative of Wilke's life, a diary of personal and professional relationships — family, lovers, friends, colleagues — that is oddly elegiac. Wilke strips to reveal that her body is covered with the names of the individuals we have heard speaking; she then methodically removes the names until all traces have disappeared.