Breeches for Headgear: Lauren Carter & Vesna Jovanovic

The topsy-turvy idea of wearing one’s own pants as a hat—breeches for headgear—suggests a rejection of propriety and a spirit of play. For most of human existence, various festivals around the world have supported these sorts of carnivalesque inversions of social norms through collective performances, costumes, and rituals. Examples include Saturnalia, Holi, Rio’s Carnival, Mardi Gras, and Candy Kid Raves.

In this exhibition of Lauren Carter’s sculptures and Vesna Jovanovic’s paintings, the world is turned upside down and bodies are turned inside out. Familiar objects and images are transformed into irreverent and grotesque forms. Jovanovic combines randomly poured ink with meticulous rendering in vibrant paintings that resemble flesh. Carter’s assemblages include found objects and personal items that are synonymous with loss and the burden of sentimentality. Like ritual incantation, their work depends on careful attention to process and material. Both artists use carnivalesque humor to evoke transmutation, celebration, and the spirit of collective laughter.

The title phrase comes from a book about the French novelist Rabelais. The following passage describes how the pandemic that shook medieval Europe triggered a social transformation reminiscent of carnival antics: “Life has been lifted out of its routine, the web of conventions has been torn; all the official hierarchic limits have been swept away. The plague has created its own unique atmosphere that grants both outward and inward rights. Even the most respected man may now wear his ‘breeches for headgear.’” —Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World

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Lauren Carter holds an MFA with Distinction from the University of New Mexico and a BFA from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Painting and Metalwork. Primarily working in mixed media sculpture and installations, she often includes found objects and personal items that are synonymous with loss and the burden of sentimentality. Carter is a native of south Louisiana and presently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Selected exhibitions include: Offerings or Clusterfucks, Belong Gallery, Chicago IL; Static Cling, Heaven Gallery, Chicago IL; Front and Center: The Language of Furniture, Hyde Park Art Center,Chicago IL; Personal is Political, Non-Fiction Gallery, Savannah, GA, Rendezvous, Keystone Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Suddenly Plastic, Chicago Artists’ Coalition; pre/proscribed. Gallery AC[2], Albuquerque, NM.

Vesna Jovanovic is a Chicago-based artist whose work focuses on bodily subjects, often involving humor and chance. She is a recipient of many residency fellowships including The Studios MASS MoCA; Santa Fe Art Institute; Ucross Foundation; VCCA France; and a long-term studio residency at the International Museum of Surgical Science. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Gordon Center for Integrative Science at the University of Chicago; Greymatter Gallery in Milwaukee; Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington; OSU Urban Arts Space in Columbus; Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; and Chashama Gallery in New York, among many other venues, and is included in permanent collections at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; International Museum of Surgical Science; and the Koehnline Museum of Art.