Liz Magor: MOUTH: FULL

At the Equinox Gallery until May 17

Encountering Liz Magor’s new work MOUTH: FULL is like stumbling upon the deserted aftermath of a very unhealthy party. Half a dozen tabletops are stacked with trays and littered with candies and candy wrappers, cigarettes and cigarette butts, bottles of booze, chewing gum, crumbs, and a mouldy piece of cake. Jackets in leather or tweed are also scattered about—along with the corpses of small animals. Well, sculptures of the corpses of small animals.

Magor uses polymerized gypsum, a kind of plaster, to make highly realistic reproductions of objects. Here, these include a mouse, a raccoon, a tiny, partially decayed bird, and a squirrel, all cast from life (or, rather, death). She has also cast five of the six utility-style tabletops on view, various stacked configurations of decorative “silver” trays, and much of the detritus depicted in the show. Her installation mixes these naturalistic works with some of their real-world counterparts: real cigs, real matches, real candies, and so on.

The integrating of actual objects with their sculptural representations, of the found with the fabricated and the worthless with its labour-intensive reproduction, is characteristic of Magor’s art-making. Her use of mimicry poses questions about systems of value, perception, and cognition. The title of the show and the evidence of eating, drinking, and smoking further push the work beyond its surprising formal elements into queries about the relationship between oral gratification, low-grade consumption, and waste.

In her short artist’s statement, Magor adds that “a higher order of waste is the exhausted bodies of small animals.” It’s easy to see the animal corpses as metaphors for the confrontation between nature and culture—a confrontation that nature is clearly losing. These dead creatures are curled in, on, or around serving trays and ashtrays, as if they had recently been poisoned. Their placement amplifies the sense of the unhealthiness of the stuff that’s been consumed here. The toxins we’re addicted to (and that includes gasoline) are poisoning our planet.

As in Magor’s earlier work, there are suggestions here of hoarding provisions—often absurdly non-nutritious—against some fearfully anticipated event or situation. A previous example is her 2001 sculpture Double Cabinet (blue), which looks exactly like two stacks of folded bath towels, except that the rear view of the work reveals the stacks are a hollow container, filled with cases and cans of beer.

In her current show, look for Hat & Glove, a sculpture of a pair of women’s leather gloves laid on top of a tweed hat. These “accessories” again compose a hollow container, in which are hidden chocolate bars and sticks of gum. In more recent works in the show, however, the stashing metaphor has shifted somewhat. Yes, there are sculptures of clothing juxtaposed with cigarettes, chocolate boxes, or bottles of whiskey. Rather than hiding the goodies, however, the pseudo-garments are pierced by them in a menacing metaphor of addiction and alienation.

As with all Magor’s work, the mixing of the real and the representational creates an odd disjunction. Degrees of mimicry vary, meaning is elusive, and an almost apocalyptic mood prevails.