New York-based artist Patricia Cronin talks about women, power and sexuality inside her Tack Room installation at the 2017 Armory Show.

This is one of the twelve large-scale projects that Eric Shiner, vice president of contemporary art at Sotheby’s curated for the fair’s new Platform section. Picture the intensity of immersive multi-media room-sized installations by male artists such as Jason Rhodes or Paul McCarthy…but with a female perspective. This free-standing wood replica of an essential space within a horse barn is filled with real-life evidence of the artist’s personal passion for horses. Her own horse paintings and small cast bronze horse sculptures are embedded in the display of sexually suggestive leather saddles, bridles, whips and suede chaps, images of horse-crazy girls, pages from Playboy and Stud magazine’s “Breed of the Month” centerfolds. Cronin’s reprise of the immersive environment she exhibited 20 years ago sparks this conversation about feminist issues, politics, and the artist’s resolve to represent untold stories about women.

Indeed, Cronin is making art history. Her 2015 installation titled Shrine for Girls, a collateral exhibition of the 56th Venice Biennale, is documented in the sixth edition of Art: A Brief History.

Sound Editor: Guney Ozsan | Photography by Cathy Byrd
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