Edward Kienholz | David Zwirner

Also at David Zwirner's 519 West 19th space is Edward Kienholz's (1927-1994) Roxys. The life-size recreation of the sitting room of "a well-known Las Vegas brothel," Roxys was first exhibited in 1962 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. According to the show's press release, the "assemblage represents the first of the artist's environmental installations, or 'tableaux' as he called them, and has been credited as being one of the earliest examples of what is now ubiquitously referred to as 'installation art.'"

Born in Fairfield, Washington, Kienholz moved to Los Angeles in 1953 where he became an active member of the art community despite never having formally studied art. He created his "assemblages and environments" with "disparate found objects and discarded, everyday materials" and explored "issues surrounding cultural existence and the inhumanities of twentieth-century Western society." Roxys is just one of the artist's many works which "addressed themes surrounding the vulgarity of humanity."

Roxys is set in 1943 and by using time-appropriate props such as a calendar from that year, period decor, old magazines, vintage beer bottles and cigarette packs, and "a juke box playing familiar songs from the forties," Kienholz spared no details and recreated a realistic and unsettling environment housing a series of disturbing, distorted characters. These figurative assemblages representing the brothel's workers/inhabitants are made in a Frankenstein-ish fashion with mannequins and assorted items. They are subtly placed on white "pedestals to indicate a deliberate separation from their environment" and bear descriptive names like Miss Cherry Delight; Cockeyed Jenny; Fifi, A Lost Angel; Five Dollar Billy; and The Madam. The Madam wears a tattered dress and has a boar's skull in place of her head. Five Dollar Billy lies on a sewing machine stand with names carved into her torso and a rose sticking out of her throat. Cockeyed Jenny is made from a "pop-lid garbage can with mannequin legs" to reference "the use of women as 'dumping grounds for man's physical and emotional advances.'" These creepy, warped figures "are made to be repulsive, while functioning metaphorically," and "represent the remnants of human experience."

Kienholz's nightmarish environment exhibits "a vivid and somewhat theatrical experience of the horrific qualities of prostitution; his bordello is grotesque and morbid rather than erotic." With Roxys, Kienholz makes a powerful statement regarding issues that still plague us today, like "the oppression of women, the bleaker aspects of memory and time, and the troubling cruelties of contemporary culture." Roxys is a bleak look into the past as well as the future. Learn more at Davidzwirner.com. Through June 19th.