Meg Cranston: Magical Death, at Leo Koenig, Inc.

For ‘Flash Art’ Magazine

As if posing for a magazine spread, five models in colorful fashions lounged and strutted around the gallery. After spotting the woman in the multicolored, ruffled jumpsuit with hood, it became apparently that the fashionistas were pinatas, all sporting Meg Cranston’s angular hairstyle. Cast from her own body and made to order in Mexico, these oversized party favors explored a new means of merging fashion and art. Or so it would seem without reading the press release, which not only detailed the origins of the pinata but dipped into documentary film production in South America to explain the show’s title. To make two long stories short, ‘Magical Death’ is a film made in 1973 about the Yanomamo people, who symbolically kill their enemies, and the pinata originated in China as a form of offering in planting season. It’s not clear what the pinata and film have to do with one another apart from the fact that they both involve exporting and altering foreign customs. It’s also a stretch to see how they relate to the sculpture at hand, other than to suppose that Cranston is playing a role in which she sacrifices herself to bring blessing to the ones who symbolically destroy her. Either way, the pinatas are fun to look at, particularly one in a headdress who dangled a tiny football player in her hand, but the concept is more weird than compelling.