Jessica Ciocci until 04.08 Foxy Productions, NY

Ciocci's work explores the process of consumption through the examination of desire, incorporation and detritus. She appraises childhood as a time when individuals are psychically hardwired to consume, using a primitivist pig-like character as a primary motif to disarmingly critique the dynamics of demand, supply
and surplus.

Employing at times a junk-store aesthetic that revels in a world of bric-a-brac, the unwanted and hidden treasures, Ciocci delves into the psychology of our emotional attachment to popular symbols, characters and narratives. Key to her approach is a profoundly intuitive re-presentation of the all-too-familiar as
the uncanny.

A grandly–scaled fabric work combines everyday found textiles and repeated motifs, colors and patterning to produce an almost hypnotic effect that pushes figure and form to their limits. Together, diverse snapshot-like photographs - of Bart Simpson dolls, money blowing away on the street, a paper fish, an arm too close to the camera to be in focus - gel into a poignant, downcast whole. A series of collages, using fabric, paint, and found images of Barbie, pets and fairy tales, deftly explore the pleasures and terrors of the childhood experience. An animation-based print and a video use a flatness of texture and color, not unlike that of children's cartoons, to create bright semi-abstract character-scapes that are undercut by an almost claustrophobic disquiet. A large acid-hued knitted yarn piece, comprising a number of individual panels, appears to be a totem to the pig-like figure, to venerate it, or perhaps, acting like a gargoyle, to ward off its potential for harm.

Jessica Ciocci is a member of artists' group Paper Rad. Selected exhibitions with Paper Rad include: Green on Red, Dublin (upcoming, October 2006); PaceWildenstein (2005); Carnegie Arts Center, North Tonowanda, NY (2005); The ArtReview 25 at Phillips de Pury, New York (2005); Deitch Projects (Paper Rad & Cory Arcangel) (2005); Foxy Production, New York (2004); the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu (2003); Tate Britain, London (2003); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003); the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2003).

Jessica Ciocci and Paper Rad have received critical acclaim in a range of publications, including: The New York Times; ArtReview; Artforum; Art in America; Rolling Stone; Mute; Vice; Issue; and Select. Publications include “Internet Art” (Thames and Hudson, 2004), and an artist’s book designed by Ben Jones and Paper Rad (Picture Box, 2005). Jessica Ciocci and Paper Rad are online at www.paperrad.org