Art Review: Laura Splan
by Alison Bing
SF Chronicle, March 13,2005
special to SF Gate

Medical technology is what we make of it in Laura Splan's otherworldly drawings of implants that have been rejected and artfully repurposed. She composes and scans images of medical devices, then draws over them with a fine-nibbed pen, using her own blood as ink. In one delicate image, piles of discarded breast implants seem to have taken the place of decorative pebbles in an aquarium, sprouting reedlike filaments that sway as elegantly as algae in a crosscurrent. In this image, the true decorative potential of breast implants is fully realized, and for once they don't look the least bit grotesque. Far more sinister is Splan's image of surgical screws that look like medieval torture implements, dangling from what could be either frayed ropes or frayed nerves -- maybe this is what passes for a carnival game in hell. "Bone plates #1" seems to belong on the opposite end of the spiritual spectrum, offering a rare glimpse into the infinite. This ethereal drawing could be a contemplative mandala or a glorious rosette cathedral window, composed of all-seeing eyes that are sections of artificial bone with gaps in the middle for marrow. Splan balances corporeal and incorporeal, wondrous and weird; her take on a bone mill makes the high-tech device look like a primitive sausage factory, with strands feeding through the grating of the mill and into a cup. Splan's show gives several new meanings to the phrase "anatomically correct"; the implants correct our own malfunctioning parts, and she corrects the implants with her own anatomy. But her show at the all-female, all-the-time Femina Potens Gallery also corrects another anatomical issue: the overwhelming XY factor of the art world, where strong solo shows by women artists such as this one are too often presented only during Women's History Month.