Skogland, Sandy. In the Last Hour: Sandy Skoglund Photographs and Sculpture, 1979-1992.

September 27 - November 8, 1992. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, 1992. Introduction by Thomas R. Toperzer. Essays by Arlene Raven and Gloria Picaso. Includes exhibition check list and biographical information. Wraps, 26 color photographs, 40 pages, fine. Summary:

Published in 1992 by the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, this 38-page exhibition catalog documented a major traveling mid-career survey of the pioneering American installation artist and photographer Sandy Skoglund. The headlining exhibition ran from September 27 through November 8, 1992, alongside a concurrent presentation of her famous room-sized installation, The Green House.

Core Themes and Artistic Practice

The exhibition and volume tracked 13 formative years of Skoglund’s highly influential, surrealist style, which fundamentally challenged the boundaries between photography, sculpture, and performance art.

• Staged Photography and Assemblage: The catalog highlights Skoglund’s unique process of spending months building obsessive, room-sized tableaux from scratch. She paints the environments in striking, monochromatic hues and fills them with hand-sculpted, brightly colored animals (such as her iconic neon cats, dogs, or fish) and live actors, before documenting the final scene with a large-format camera.

• The Illusion of Artifice: The exhibition showcased how Skoglund treats the final photograph not as a mere document, but as the ultimate, flattening manifestation of her sculptures. Her works juxtapose mundane, domestic American settings (bedrooms, lounges, lawns) with apocalyptic, dreamlike disruptions, exploring themes of commercialism, anxiety, and humanity's fractured relationship with nature.

• Featured Works: The catalog chronicles key conceptual masterpieces from this era, including Radioactive Cats(1980), Revenge of the Goldfish (1981), Atomic Love (1992), and Body Limits (1992).

Catalog Specifications & Contents

• Critical Commentary: The publication features essential essays by prominent American feminist art critic and historian Arlene Raven and curator Gloria Picazo. Their texts analyze Skoglund’s place within contemporary conceptualism and the psychological undercurrents of late-20th-century life.

• Visual Documentation: The softcover volume includes high-fidelity color reproductions of Skoglund’s Cibachrome prints, an inventory of her accompanying polyester resin and bronze sculptures, and biographical records tracing her exhibition history.