Thick Skinned
Commentary by LYNN BASA, April 2024
A first look at Bobbi Meier's sensuous sculptures often elicit an amused reaction from viewers, but underneath the seemingly lighthearted facades are dark hints of the tragedy and trauma experienced by so many women. She thinks of her awkwardly sensuous and weirdly humorous installations as “emotional repositories for life situations which cannot be changed.” A hybrid of the unsettling irreverence of Sarah Lucas’s feminist, body-based work and the biomorphic forms of Louise Bourgeois, Meier manipulates delicate materials in an aggressive manner. Fiber is bound and contorted, disassembled stuffed toys become provocative bits of fur, things that should be soft are hard, decorative shapes vaguely resemble creases and folds of the body. A dichotomy of seduction and revulsion exists, where fragments of thoughts and materials are re-constructed to become assemblages of grotesque beauty.