Exhibit Reception With Marilyn Lysohir

The Dark Side of Dazzle is a room-sized installation that fills MAM’s Carnegie Gallery. Lysohir’s mother and father both served in World War II before they met and later married, and she made the piece to remember and honor their service. Lysohir points out the profound effects war has on spouses and families at home as well as those in conflict. The installation combines paintings and drawings with situational vignettes that show personal, interior spaces as well as the large-scale battleship sculpture. Visitors are also welcome to sit and listen to, or read, first-hand stories from veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam.

The central focus is a 24 foot long, nine-foot-high replica of a World War era battleship that Lysohir built with ceramic and wood. The entire surface of the ship is painted with a camouflage pattern known as Dazzle. The patterning was created by the British Royal Navy during World War I to confuse the spatial recognition of German U-boats and was later adopted by the US Navy and continued to be used into the second World War. Lysohir created an original pattern for her work with pastel blue, pink, yellow, green, and black. The colorful, geometric painting has a disarming effect on the otherwise menacing form of a battleship.

Other elements in the installation include a life-sized woman wrapped in a towel, standing in front of a bathroom sink, next to a bathtub in which floats a scaled down version of the battleship. Across the gallery stands a bedroom dresser and chair, a pair of shoes on the floor, the bottom drawer is partially open to reveal another battleship. The consistent Dazzle pattern on the furniture, shoes, wrapped around the women’s body along with the hidden battleships throughout the domestic scenes heightens the ever-presence of distant conflict.

MAM is honored to work with Marilyn Lysohir again, and to present this important piece that resonates as much today as it did 37 years ago when it was created, the true testament of great art.  

On view through December 17.