Seattle
The fourth exhibition of Doris Chase’s work since her death in 2008 focused on the decade 1964–74. Drawn from the artist’s estate, the survey revealed Doris Chase before she became “Doris Chase,” pioneer godmother of dance video. Chase did not arrive a nobody in New York when she moved there in 1972. Her painted and laminated wood sculptures, which predated Marisol, were hailed in ARTnews in 1965 and were seen in Tokyo that year. Abmeyer + Wood uncovered four pristine examples that suggest a semiotics of abbreviated gestures: hunched shoulders, clasping or warning hands, embracing couples, and crucially, rotating figures (Dancing, c. 1965). The latter are at the root of Chase’s dance-related videos, not to mention her public sculptures, including Changing Form (1968), her best known outdoor work in Seattle …see the entire review in the print version of April’s Sculpture magazine.
