Our Picks - Deborah Kass, After Louise Bourgeois (2010)

From Time Out New York - “A feminist artist who mines art history, pop culture and her own Jewish identity, Deborah Kass appropriates iconic images, quotes and song lyrics and makes them her own. Her paintingsoften critique the male-centric character of 20th-century art by putting a satirical spin on the efforts of famous male artists, from Picasso and Jackson Pollock to David Salle and Ed Ruscha. Andy Warhol has proven to be an especially fertile subject: Kass’s best-known works include parodies of his “Elvis” paintings and portraits of Liz Taylor, which ironically led to a 2012 retrospective at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Fresh off the unveiling of her public art sculpture, OY/YO, at Brooklyn Bridge Park, she’s readying a solo show for Paul Kasmin Gallery, which features the latest entries in her sharp and thought-provoking oeuvre.”

“This was my first piece in neon. I’d previously made a version of it as a painting, but I wanted a way to make the colors more vivid. The sign fabricator who made it for me said he’d never made anything with so many colors! The quote is a take off from one by Louise Bourgeois, who said ‘A woman has no place as an artist unless she proves over and over again that she won’t be eliminated.’ I thought that was way too hard on women artists, though. It lays the blame for problem that’s really the art world’s problem on the artist herself. So I changed the line to read, ‘A woman has no place in the art world unless she proves over and over again she won’t be eliminated.’”

Photograph: Courtesy the artist/Paul Kasmin Gallery