Nancy Davidson

Robert Miller Gallery

September 11-October 6, 2011

Robert Miller Gallery, New York, NY

Grace Glueck New York Times, Art In Review: Nancy Davidson

That 60's phrase ''If you've got it, flaunt it!'' could be the watchword for Nancy Davidson's flamboyantly zaftig sculptures, wittily made of heavy latex weather balloons and then garbed in corsets, ruffled tu­ tus, spider-web netting, giant tas-­ sels and silver lame hot pants.

These voluptuous but lighter­ than-air creatures are all the sexier for being constrained by their at­ tire. ''Maebe'' (named for Mae West) is a fat white balloon, maybe eight feet high, squeezed around the middle by a Gay 90's blue corset edged with black lace; the parts emerging from the corset suggest bosom and bottom. For fear th.at its ebullience might carry it away, ''Maebe'' is held in place by moor­ing ropes.

So is ''Spindarella,'' a creature whose strapping bulk is tied to di­vide its posterior into shapely butocks; its front is patterned in rope and encircled by a double collar of polka dot material. But ''Netella,'' comprising two big yellow spheres each covered with froufrou black netting, sits on the floor in a nest of black and yellow tulle like a pair of elegant eggs waiting to be hatched. The boldest work here is the aptly named ''Buttress,'' a stack of five buttocky shapes in blush pink, the curves of each accentuated by a pair of skintight silver panties. To give''Buttress''a ·double erotic whammy, each component is placed atop another to form a sort of phallic pillar. These tied-up, fetishistic balloons could, I suppose, be construed as supporting cliched male fantasies about women and therefore anti­-feminist; or they might be a spoof of those fantasies. Either way, they have a zany exuberance that defies gravitas.