1-Colage Me

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 30, 2020 at 11:01am

Curator’s Comments:

 

This collage, posted way back in 2009, has come up randomly on the site in the last few days. I found it slightly disturbing with the purplish undertones in the skin, and disjointed appendages.  But that initial upset gives way to intrigue with longer viewing.  The arrangement of the body, with overlapping parts, still constructs a roughly accurate anatomical alignment.  The larger and duplicitous heads turn independently, as in a Cubist composition, while the hands point toward to the tapered bottom section with the upturned foot.  Looking back through your other figurative works on the site for clues about content, the piece entitled Me, myself, and here’s looking at you kid shares a similar abstraction and fracturing of a portrait, but in a less complex, and arguably more whimsical manner. Then I came across 12 East West.  This painterly piece appears to have been created before, or likely after 1 Collage Me. The painting enjoys a suspension of reality unattainable to the viewer with the photographic collage.  The patches of saturated color next to the fleshy constructs of bodies is dreamlike, and evokes mythological specters of twins and transformation. Seeing the manner in which the body is freely molded and reassembled as an expressive vehicle, the collage takes on a decidedly less volatile identity. Anatomy is fluid, and in the service of a broader exploration of form.

Comment by Bob Batchelor on April 21, 2009 at 4:41pm

Ouch! Hope it didn't hurt.