Coco Chanel famously said, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” Cajsa von Zeipel’s psychedelic sculptures of immediate connection do the opposite. Young girls with erratic gestures are piled under mountainous excess—dollar-store finds that marry ’90s Nintendo nostalgia with a contemporary delirium of tech-erotica. Her work pulls viewers into a rabbit hole of Barbie-doll-house-pink bodies adorned with slogan tees, bulbous backpacks, and animatronic kittens with deadpan eyes. The sculptures’ devilish expressions are foreign and caricature, at once familiar and odd, disgusted and aroused.
Von Zeipel’s ongoing titular exhibition at Miami’s Rubell Museum includes five silicone figures brimming with zeal and stuff. Overdressed with objects and emotions, they are hyperbolic mannequins of a dystopian department store where the offerings are difficult to dissect because everything seems to both ooze and coalesce.
