Lara Schnitger's work evokes the eroticism, violence, and vulnerability of bodily forms. Working in diverse media, the Dutch-born, Amsterdam- and Los Angeles-based artist questions the norms of gender and sexuality as they are traditionally mapped onto figures, both two- and three-dimensional. Schnitger is best known for her large-scale sculptures, which feature knitted and sewn textiles drawn taut over seemingly haphazard wooden armatures. In the older works Vanity Man (2002) and Betty Ford (2005), ill-proportioned skeletons are barely reined in, threatening to break through their own makeshift skins. Humorously fragile, gendered or androgynous, Schnitger's constructions are at once alien and all too human.

The artist's recent forays into photo collage recontextualize pornographic signifiers of sexuality to comment on the dualistic role of the female body. Heavy-breasted women, mostly in masturbatory poses, are made motherly by Schnitger's strategic placement of screaming infant faces between their legs and against their bosoms. The ecstasy of orgasm becomes the agony of childbirth, leaving viewers to ponder the fine line between pleasure and pain, as well as their most widely circulated representations. Schnitger's interest in pornographic imagery also infuses her current sculptural projects, though in a subtler fashion. Private Dancer (2007), currently on view at the Arnhem Museum of Modern Art in the Netherlands, comprises a thick-limbed, maroon body ringed with white lace garters. Black strings dangle from the center of randomly placed pink, mammillary additions to the figure, referencing bondage, or perhaps puppetry. The Amazonian Miss Universe (2008) caused a stir at this year's Sonsbeek 2008: Grandeur, also in Arnhem, when some visitors were offended by the figural structure's porn-patterned right arm. Schnitger responded with an ironic amelioration, covering the exposed silk-screened genitalia with miniature hearts.

-Sarah Kessler