Helen of Troy was the most beautiful and dangerous woman in the history of western culture. Her story comes down to us from European literature’s founding epic…. But what do we know of her? After three thousand years of notoriety she remains strangely silent as the most beautiful and disastrous objectification of male anxiety and desire.
— Eleanor Antin, San Diego, August 2007
As a pioneering conceptual artist, Season 2 artist Eleanor Antin has engaged in a dialogue with history for nearly forty years. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York City presents Antin’s latest work, in which she turns her gaze on the Trojan War. Through Helen’s Odyssey, Helen of Troy is finally allowed to speak for herself in a series of imagined scenes. In nine large-scale dramatic photographs, warriors, artists, gods, and goddesses emerge in a set of luminous archaeological retrievals from Helen’s historically fragmented life.
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts will also feature Eleanor Antin’s work in a solo exhibition in Booth 557 at the 2008 Armory Show in New York, March 27–30. Elsewhere, her work is included in the exhibition, WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution, opening next week at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center. Later this year, a new retrospective featuring her most recent works, Eleanor Antin: Historical Takes, will open at the San Diego Museum of Art, July 19–November 2, 2008.
Opening reception for Helen’s Odyssey is tomorrow, February 15, 6-8pm.