Since the 1960s, Lynda Benglis has worked to subvert prevailing ideologies about art, gender, and the relationship between them. Best known for her iconic poured-latex “floor paintings” and sculptures made of layered wax, Benglis's  visceral practice is both performative and sensual. In the 1970s, she began to challenge the rigors of Minimalism by creating flows of hardened polyurethane, often garish or metallic in color, that seem to careen off walls. Although Benglis states these early works are about pure aesthetics and her own feminist views, she also acknowledges their relationship to the decorative flamboyance of the Mardi Gras culture in which she was raised. This culture and its ornamental elements later influenced her ideas as she “began to think of painting as a skin.” About her choice of materials, Benglis states, “They’ve all been used as a surface for human skin. Latex and rubber masks, wax effigies, and wax in ritual. I was also interested in the fact that most of these materials derive from nature.”

Label from One Another: Spiderlike, I Spin Mirrors, March 7–June 1, 2014