Laurie Simmons: Color Coordinated Interiors 1983

Color Coordinated Interiors catalogues a little known but characteristic and illuminating early project of Laurie Simmons's from 1983, just a few years after her first solo show in New York. Simmons is best known for her chilling and sophisticated photographs of dolls and dollhouses--seminal works that can be found in the greatest collections of contemporary art throughout the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Here, Simmons created miniature spaces using projection and illusion rather than glue-and-board craft, casting photographs behind dolls and lighting her tiny models starkly with flashlights--they're "Teenettes," three-inch-high Japanese figures whose clothes and hairstyles are all molded from the same single piece of brightly-colored plastic. The Teenettes' features are fuzzy by nature, but the scenes behind them here are photographed so that piping on every pillow pops out. This guided tour, with an interview by California artist James Welling, puts this newly collected work in context.