Concentrated Power investigates Dash (1994), a marble sculpture carved and inlaid by the artist Barbara Ségal to mimic a commercially recognizable bottle of laundry detergent--right down to its small scale.
Organized by the curatorial cohort of Art History’s Exhibition course (2020-2021), Concentrated Power offers multiple ways of engaging with a single work in the Neuberger Museum’s permanent collection.
Barbara Ségal’s Dash (1994) is instantly recognizable as the form of a bottle of laundry detergent
A feat of inlaid marble, it showcases Ségal’s technical mastery while also playing with high and low imagery and material in the late twentieth century.
Drawing its title from the advertising language used for the product’s print marketing, Concentrated Power positions Dash in dialogue with systems of value. Ségal’s marble mimicry of a laundry detergent bottle complicates the relationship between the elite and the everyday, mediating the ways culture both assigns and takes away value. This cleverly crafted work reaches broadly to the history of sculpture, the politics of mass media, appropriation, and gender politics.