Installation view. Photograph by Garrett Carroll

text by Hank Manning

Rocío García’s oil paintings look like frames taken from a movie’s climax. We wonder what led to the perilous conundrums depicted and if the subjects will get out safely or meet their demise. With a single perspective and key details cropped out, both the viewer and subject have only a partial understanding of the situation. Within every scene, there is a composite of genres—action, drama, mystery, horror, comedy. Headless men are chained together and handcuffed, whilst curiously riding rollerskates. Another headless man, this one with chicken feet, guards his bed with a rifle, while the decapitated heads of his prey above have seemingly reincarnated to plot against him. A fierce-looking man called Jack the Punisher stands shirtless in the snow, seemingly held captive by a small rabbit.

The exhibition is a collaboration between García and the author Carmen Maria Machado, whose memoir In the Dream House focuses on an abusive same-sex relationship. Machado, here in her first curation, wrote captions that thoughtfully explore some of the context the paintings so demand. She chose the show’s title, The Object of Power is Power, from George Orwell’s 1984. The paintings certainly support the assertion that people seek power without any need for external reward, but for sheer enjoyment of power itself. The works interrogate the multidimensionality of power—how individuals and institutions dominate one another through force, but also through voluntary and even enthusiastic consent. Power is a subject that naturally blends genres. It is sometimes simultaneously horrifying and hilarious, demeaning and arousing. It often feels permanently entrapping, though it may only truly endure for a brief period.

Personality differences sometimes naturally precipitate power dynamics—in romantic couples, a confident, assertive partner may exert power over one who is more apprehensive. García draws on another literary influence in the painting La Bella Samurai, named after Charles Baudelaire’s book of poetry. Two women sit in a bath in a bright turquoise room. One of them appears relaxed, drinking a glass of wine, while the other, on high alert, grips a samurai sword, as she looks outward at the viewer. Clearly, love can feel like one thing for one partner and at the same time something very different to another. Baudelaire’s Le Vin de l’Assassin described the “dark enchantments” of love. García and Machado also clearly highlight the frequent anxiety involved. They further challenge the misogynistic tropes associated with femininity and, in particular, lesbian relationships, by showing that these dynamics are just as complex as any other. The sword contrasts symbols of domesticity also on view, including brushes, slippers, and flowers.

Rocío García
*Like the Last Blues (Triptico)*, 2006
From the series *El Thriller*
oil on canvas
all works 47 x 55 in
Photograph by Garrett Carroll

The exhibition links these intimate, natural power dynamics with those entirely artificial and at a systemic level. Like the Last Blues, a triptych, depicts a scene of tied-up and gagged migrants under the discretion of one free man who wields a passport. Besides the shackles and binds seen in most paintings (which Machado reminds us may be applied either by force or by choice), weapons, here swords and guns, can reinforce or reshuffle existing hierarchies.

The large canvases are not black and white—neither literally nor figuratively. They all feature otherworldly bright colors, like Technicolor film cranked to maximum saturation. Likewise, most do not portray obvious good and evil. Neither García’s paintings nor Machado’s pontifications encourage us to root for or against any of the subjects, although many of them seem moments away from determining a winner and a loser, whether a victim escapes or succumbs, or if a complete reversal of fortune could occur. Power exists for its own sake, but it may be natural or man-made, voluntary or enforced, benevolent or destructive, or somehow, all of these contradictions simultaneously.

The exhibition forces us to consider how to balance the power we give up. Some amount of vulnerability is pleasurable, and even necessary for social and romantic relationships. But erring too far towards submission leaves us vulnerable to abuse, both by individuals and the state.

Rocío García: The Object of Power is Power is on view through September 20 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, 26 Wooster Street, New York