Courtesy of the artists and Nils Staerk gallery, Copenhagen
Superflex is a Danish collective formed in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnsterne Christiansen. Their work is informed by a concern in social betterment, and they regard their artworks as tools that impact specific communities. Their projects often involve a series of objects and dynamics in which several experts are brought in to develop even more sophisticated and effective structures.
The production of commodities, public space, energy sources and forms of organization are some fields in which the collective has worked in the past. Their presence within art spaces is through material, which comprises and represents such projects.
The video "The Working Life" is a short film in collaboration with hypnotist Tommy Rosenkilde, and it intends to create a transpersonal experience, where the viewer is guided through the alienation and frustration of contemporary working conditions. By offering an experience inside someone else’s life and body, the collective creates a space for empathy and understanding.
Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin Gallery, New York, Paris, Hong Kong
Bharti Kher (b. 1969, London, U.K.) lives and works in New Delhi, India. Kher is known for her large-scale sculptural works that make reference to mythology and allegorical tales, which often take on hybrid forms and shapes. Kher’s practice also challenges traditional social and moral conventions and critically explores the role and position of women in society.
The female, Madonna-like icon form in "TBC" is both concealed and suggestively revealed by swaths of fabric, or saris — a traditional Indian garment consisting of a single, long fabric drape worn by women. In "TBC" fabric pours from the mouth of the female figure and is also stuffed into a slot located in its back, which implies a silencing of the subject. The movement of fabric in and out of the female body turns it into an abject symbol signifying turmoiled insides that manifest outside of the body.
In the context of the exhibition, this work makes reference to the literal constraints placed on the body and its behaviors by tradition, which are enforced by societal codes such as fashion, uniforms or customary modes of dress.
Courtesy of the artist, New York
Hannah Levy’s (b. 1991, New York, New York) biomorphic sculptures are a suggestion of the human body through a combination of mass-produced design forms and cast silicone pieces. The artist makes use of found metal elements. Cold, sterile, everyday pieces like safety bars, handrails or medical equipment are removed from their intentional and appropriate environment. Paired with these are membranes or objects in cast silicone, colored in beiges or pinks, which alludes to Caucasian skin.
In the sculptures present, Levy stresses the relationship to the human body through scale. Each piece resembles a chair, though what would act as a seat is thin, stretched silicone that could not support weight. The combination of metal and silicone produce dichotomies of hard versus soft, cold versus warm and slick versus squishy. Such opposing sensations rest uncomfortably in the psyche as related to, but removed from the body.
Courtesy of the artist, New York
Hannah Levy’s (b. 1991, New York, New York) biomorphic sculptures are a suggestion of the human body through a combination of mass-produced design forms and cast silicone pieces. The artist makes use of found metal elements. Cold, sterile, everyday pieces like safety bars, handrails or medical equipment are removed from their intentional and appropriate environment. Paired with these are membranes or objects in cast silicone, colored in beiges or pinks, which alludes to Caucasian skin.
In the sculptures present, Levy stresses the relationship to the human body through scale. Each piece resembles a chair, though what would act as a seat is thin, stretched silicone that could not support weight. The combination of metal and silicone produce dichotomies of hard versus soft, cold versus warm and slick versus squishy. Such opposing sensations rest uncomfortably in the psyche as related to, but removed from the body.
Courtesy of The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection LLC and Galerie Lelong & Co., New York
Ana Mendieta (b. 1948, Havana, Cuba; d. 1985, New York, New York) was a Cuban-American artist who, during a brief career from 1971 to 1985, worked in performance, sculpture, photography, drawing, film and video. Her diverse and prolific body of work touched upon and merged the artistic genres of body art, performance and land art, addressing themes of nature, temporality, violence, feminism and history.
Mendieta produced over 100 films and videos throughout her career, many of which documented performances and installations she staged in public and in nature. "Butterfly," by contrast, is a unique collaboration between the artist and the film processing technologies she employed.
In the film, Mendieta stands naked in front of the camera wearing a set of large feathered wings that transform her body into the overall form of a butterfly. Large and changing swaths of color saturate the screen as a product of Mendieta manipulating the footage and assigning different colors to different levels of brightness through a 16-channel video processor. She then re-recorded this manipulated footage off of a screen with a Super-8 camera, producing the final product of the film exhibited here.
The resulting work presents Mendieta as a brightly colored butterfly which, as a symbol, often points toward themes of transformation, resurrection and liberation of the body.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection, gift of Dr. Walter O. Evans and Mrs. Linda J. Evans
Robert S. Duncanson (b. 1821, Fayette, New York; d. 1872, Detroit, Michigan) was an accomplished painter and among the few African American painters with an active professional career during the 19th century. Studying art on his own, Duncanson was very much inspired by the Hudson River School painters and the landscape painter Thomas Cole. During the 1840s Duncanson received many commissions and exhibited his portraits. Later, after moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, he became a much sought-after landscape artist in light of his rendering of the Ohio River Valley.
In "Man Fishing," Duncanson contrasts both the coexistence and tension between nature and man through his inclusion of trees and fauna alongside a white male figure. Throughout his career, whilst participating in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States and Europe, Duncanson chose not to depict overtly political or social themes in his work, in particular reference to the plight of enslaved and freed African Americans of this time. He stated, "I have no color on the brain; all I have on the brain is paint." He also relied on commissions for his livelihood, and as such, his work reflects the white, bourgeois taste of the time.
Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul
Tony Oursler (b. 1957, New York, New York) is a multi-media artist who merges moving images with sculptural forms and space to create works that investigate human-media relationships in terms of perception, presence, empathy and agency. "CV(15)" and "IDE…", as multi-media installations, depict amalgamated faces overlain with nodes, grids and other units of technological measurement.
As facial recognition technologies become increasingly sophisticated and adept at discerning, interpreting and surveilling human emotion and behavior through bodily gesture and expression, Oursler’s hybridized installations invite the viewer to shift their perspective from surveilled subject to that of a machine during its attempt to map the body and, as a consequence, decipher the foreign language of human emotion.
Courtesy of the artist and The Hole Gallery, New York
Matthew Stone (b. 1982, London, U.K.) makes abstractions of the human body through the translation of photography onto three-dimensional surfaces. The artist typically photographs tableaux of several nude bodies contorted or interacting with one another.
In "Veil," Stone presents two photographs: one mounted on a low wooden plinth, and the other printed on fabric, placed on top of the other. These photographs are the same image, though a simple reading is confused through the scrunching of the fabric, which contorts the two figures in the photograph. Tension is found in between the hard surface and strict geometry of a rectangle and the flowing form of draped fabric.
Copyright The Estate of Bas Jan Ader/Mary Sue Ader Andersen, 2016/The Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of Meliksetian | Briggs, Los Angeles, and Metro Pictures, New York
Bastiaan Johan Christiaan “Bas Jan” Ader (b. 1942, Winschoten, Netherlands; lost at sea, 1975) was a Dutch conceptual artist and professor who immigrated to the United States, spending the last 12 years of his life in Los Angeles, California. Ader worked across mediums like photography, installation, performance and films, in most of which he appeared as the protagonist.
Ader’s work is emotionally charged and melancholic, often dealing with absurdity and the impossibility of grasping life. In past decades, he has become a cult-like figure due to the mysterious nature of his disappearance — a fatal attempt to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in 1975 as part of his performance titled "In Search of The Miraculous."
In "fall," a series of films and photographs created in the early 1970s, Ader explored the “overpowering of gravity over him.” Presenting absurd yet carefully composed scenes, the "fall" films describe a moment of tension in which Ader’s body struggles to hang on to a tree until he gives away, falls and disappears completely from the scene.
Ader, like many artists in that decade, explored the limits of the body through performance. With the simplicity of falling, an action that seemingly has no useful purpose, Ader relentlessly uses his body as a research medium to open existentialist inquires.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection
Eadweard Muybridge (b. 1830, Kingston upon Thames, U.K.; d. 1904, Kingston upon Thames, U.K.) is internationally recognized as one of the major contributors to the fields of photography, film and painting through his experiments documenting human and animal movement in sequential photographic images.
The images presented here are from Muybridge’s famous "Animal Locomotion" series, a collection of more than 700 plates taken in the 1870s studying men, women, children and animals in motions and actions ranging from the everyday to the absurd. Muybridge’s studies in movement are widely understood as contributing equally to art and science, revealing and capturing subtle placements of weight and posture mid-motion that were previously impossible to observe with the naked eye.
As a result, these photographs imply a sense of truth and standardization of the universal human and animal form. In reality, there is evidence Muybridge edited these plates to establish better aesthetic continuity, and his models came from very specific subsets of the population. Young white male athletes made up the bulk of his models who performed physically grueling and impressive tasks, while women performed idealized and humorous scenes such as dancing, chasing one another with a broom and pouring water onto one another.
By presenting his photos as scientific documents, Muybridge was able to capture and distribute images of the nude body throughout Victorian society in ways that aligned with and reinforced stereotypical notions of age, gender and physical ability.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection
Eadweard Muybridge (b. 1830, Kingston upon Thames, U.K.; d. 1904, Kingston upon Thames, U.K.) is internationally recognized as one of the major contributors to the fields of photography, film and painting through his experiments documenting human and animal movement in sequential photographic images.
The images presented here are from Muybridge’s famous "Animal Locomotion" series, a collection of more than 700 plates taken in the 1870s studying men, women, children and animals in motions and actions ranging from the everyday to the absurd. Muybridge’s studies in movement are widely understood as contributing equally to art and science, revealing and capturing subtle placements of weight and posture mid-motion that were previously impossible to observe with the naked eye.
As a result, these photographs imply a sense of truth and standardization of the universal human and animal form. In reality, there is evidence Muybridge edited these plates to establish better aesthetic continuity, and his models came from very specific subsets of the population. Young white male athletes made up the bulk of his models who performed physically grueling and impressive tasks, while women performed idealized and humorous scenes such as dancing, chasing one another with a broom and pouring water onto one another.
By presenting his photos as scientific documents, Muybridge was able to capture and distribute images of the nude body throughout Victorian society in ways that aligned with and reinforced stereotypical notions of age, gender and physical ability.
Bruce Nauman (b. 1941, Fort Wayne, Indiana) lives in New Mexico. Nauman is one of the pioneers of American conceptual and performance art. Throughout five decades, he has created a colossal body of work in an outstanding diversity of mediums.
After graduating from college in 1968, he was confronted with the expectations of what an artist "should" do. He started creating a series of films and video tapes in which his studio and body were the main materials. He famously stated, "If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art."
In "Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square," Nauman captures himself doing exactly what the title of the work indicates. Thinking about the division of art and life, the normalization of art as labor, and the use of the body as an artistic medium, Nauman’s research was created in a world where performing oneself to the camera was unexplored territory.
Moreover, Nauman’s use of his own and other representations of the body have become an art historical reference about the expanded conception of contemporary sculpture.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection, gift of Shirrel Rhoades
This portrait by Cindy Sherman (b. 1954, Glen Ridge, New Jersey) is exemplary of her larger oeuvre, which investigates identity through disguise, costume and tableaux. The artist is widely known for her photographic self-portraits that explore stereotype and trope.
Acting as director, photographer, model and stylist, Sherman casts herself in an array of female characters, questioning conventions of womanhood in popular culture.
Here, the artist poses as a Madonna figure: her white hood alludes to art historical representations of the Virgin Mary, while her makeup and horn-like curls suggest a silent film actress. Through the use of multiple references, the artist creates confusion, clouding a strict reading of persona.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection, gift of Dr. Walter O. Evans and Mrs. Linda J. Evans
Mary Edmonia Lewis (b. 1844, Rensselaer, New York; d. 1907, London, U.K.) is frequently cited as the first African American sculptor to work professionally and on an international level. Lewis was of African American and Ojibwa Native American descent.
She began her artistic training at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and in Boston, Massachusetts, before traveling to Rome, Italy, where she worked independently and produced most of the works that still survive today, including "The Wooing of Hiawatha."
As a part of a series based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), this work depicts Minnehaha, the object of Hiawatha’s wooing, seated next to her father, the Old Arrow Maker. At their feet lies a roebuck, or small deer, offered by Hiawatha as a gift to accompany his request for Minnehaha’s hand in marriage.
This work is a unique blend of cultural influence and interplay. Made by a woman of African and Native American descent in the neo-classical tradition of sculpture, the work depicts a romantic scene of Native American life as told by an Anglo-American author. As a result, the figures of Minnehaha and her father are hybridized forms, whose readings are complicated by the consequences of the transatlantic slave trade and colonial attitudes towards Native American cultures.
Courtesy of the artist and Peter Freeman Inc. gallery, New York
Charles LeDray (b. 1960, Seattle, Washington) is an American artist living and working in New York, New York. He is known for his meticulously produced works made from unusual materials that make reference to craft traditions. His interest in miniaturizing objects and environments has surprising results, bringing attention to issues of labor, consumerism and mortality.
"Jack Straws" comprises 48 tiny objects, painstakingly hand-carved by the artist from human bone, which was sourced from decommissioned medical teaching facilities. LeDray mimics the traditional game Jack Straws, or pick-up sticks, which usually depicts farming implements like a band saws, pick axes or shovels. The object of the game is to pick up as many individual parts as possible, without moving more than one piece at a time. The game relies on chance, skill and patience, which could be considered an existential metaphor. The artist’s choice of material is a deliberate and considered decision.
Historically, Jack Straws were carved from animal bones, and by LeDray's use of human bones, the viewer is confronted in a very direct manner to consider the aesthetics of the objects in relation to ethical and social mores. Whilst not intentionally making any metaphysical statement, the work is part of a continuum of the use of human remains in iconography and architecture in Western art history.
Courtesy of the artist and Mor Charpentier, Paris
Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) currently lives and works in New York. He is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work draws upon political history in an attempt to create counter narratives that recognize suppressed histories, communities and identities.
His work is known for its engagement with histories of queer culture and activism and for its insistence that the politics of sex and gender represent an opportunity to articulate definite positions against social and political injustice.
The series "The Psalms" draws from historical representations of mythological figures, beasts and monstrous humans and animals from the middle ages until the 19th century. The work reflects on the medical and cultural conceptions of "natural" and "unnatural" bodies and is concerned with categorizations of identity that have — and continue — to produce the discrimination of minority communities.
"The Psalms" is interested in the links between sexuality, science, medical practice and religious iconography to form a kind of encyclopedia of the monstrous and the bizarre, and to suggest ways to challenge the categorizing gaze.
Courtesy of the artist and Mor Charpentier, Paris
Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) currently lives and works in New York. He is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work draws upon political history in an attempt to create counter narratives that recognize suppressed histories, communities and identities.
His work is known for its engagement with histories of queer culture and activism and for its insistence that the politics of sex and gender represent an opportunity to articulate definite positions against social and political injustice.
The series "The Psalms" draws from historical representations of mythological figures, beasts and monstrous humans and animals from the middle ages until the 19th century. The work reflects on the medical and cultural conceptions of "natural" and "unnatural" bodies and is concerned with categorizations of identity that have — and continue — to produce the discrimination of minority communities. "The Psalms" is interested in the links between sexuality, science, medical practice and religious iconography to form a kind of encyclopedia of the monstrous and the bizarre, and to suggest ways to challenge the categorizing gaze.
Courtesy of the artist and Mor Charpentier, Paris
Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) currently lives and works in New York. He is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work draws upon political history in an attempt to create counter narratives that recognize suppressed histories, communities and identities.
His work is known for its engagement with histories of queer culture and activism and for its insistence that the politics of sex and gender represent an opportunity to articulate definite positions against social and political injustice.
The series "The Psalms" draws from historical representations of mythological figures, beasts and monstrous humans and animals from the middle ages until the 19th century. The work reflects on the medical and cultural conceptions of "natural" and "unnatural" bodies and is concerned with categorizations of identity that have — and continue — to produce the discrimination of minority communities. "The Psalms" is interested in the links between sexuality, science, medical practice and religious iconography to form a kind of encyclopedia of the monstrous and the bizarre, and to suggest ways to challenge the categorizing gaze.
Courtesy of the artist and Mor Charpentier, Paris
Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) currently lives and works in New York. He is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work draws upon political history in an attempt to create counter narratives that recognize suppressed histories, communities and identities.
His work is known for its engagement with histories of queer culture and activism and for its insistence that the politics of sex and gender represent an opportunity to articulate definite positions against social and political injustice. The series "The Psalms" draws from historical representations of mythological figures, beasts and monstrous humans and animals from the middle ages until the 19th century. The work reflects on the medical and cultural conceptions of "natural" and "unnatural" bodies and is concerned with categorizations of identity that have — and continue — to produce the discrimination of minority communities. "The Psalms" is interested in the links between sexuality, science, medical practice and religious iconography to form a kind of encyclopedia of the monstrous and the bizarre, and to suggest ways to challenge the categorizing gaze.
Collection of David Salkin and Dirk Denison, Chicago
The photographs of Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982, San Bernardino, California) explore desire, sensuality and the ability of photography to present layers of representation. The artist works with close friends and his own body to create complex compositions that confound a simple reading of image, often through the use of mirrors, or collaging and re-photographing his photographs.
Presented here are two small-scale images that splinter black and white bodies. In one, the center of the image is a void: a velvet curtain fills the main space of the composition, while hands, legs and arms of unidentified figures are fragments that act as formal elements as well as narrative devices related to homoerotic desire. A larger work depicts a cut-up photograph in triangular configuration which is re-photographed with a nude figure in a sparse environment, creating a collage of the real and the reproduced.
Collection of Emanuel Aguilar, courtesy of DOCUMENT, Chicago
The photographs of Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982, San Bernardino, California) explore desire, sensuality and the ability of photography to present layers of representation. The artist works with close friends and his own body to create complex compositions that confound a simple reading of image, often through the use of mirrors, or collaging and re-photographing his photographs.
Presented here are two small-scale images that splinter black and white bodies. In one, the center of the image is a void: a velvet curtain fills the main space of the composition, while hands, legs and arms of unidentified figures are fragments that act as formal elements as well as narrative devices related to homoerotic desire. A larger work depicts a cut-up photograph in triangular configuration which is re-photographed with a nude figure in a sparse environment, creating a collage of the real and the reproduced.
Courtesy of the artist and DOCUMENT, Chicago
The photographs of Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982, San Bernardino, California) explore desire, sensuality and the ability of photography to present layers of representation. The artist works with close friends and his own body to create complex compositions that confound a simple reading of image, often through the use of mirrors, or collaging and re-photographing his photographs.
Presented here are two small-scale images that splinter black and white bodies. In one, the center of the image is a void: a velvet curtain fills the main space of the composition, while hands, legs and arms of unidentified figures are fragments that act as formal elements as well as narrative devices related to homoerotic desire. A larger work depicts a cut-up photograph in triangular configuration which is re-photographed with a nude figure in a sparse environment, creating a collage of the real and the reproduced.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection
The meticulously labored sculptures of Andres Bedoya (b. 1979, La Paz, Bolivia) reference the human body in form or material. The artist uses both everyday and precious materials to explore the human body’s relationship with time and memory.
In "Untitled (Discs)," Bedoya embellished a sewn fabric armature with hundreds of hand-cut and hammered discs. Referencing a shroud, the hollow sculpture implies a bodily form through the protuberances that acts as sleeves. Through embellishment of a material that will develop patina over time, Bedoya suggests armor and its eventual decay.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection, gift of Dr. Walter O. Evans and Mrs. Linda J. Evans
Elizabeth Catlett (b. 1915, Washington, D.C.; d. 2012, Cuernavaca, Mexico) was an artist, professor, activist and one of the first women — and the first African American woman — to graduate from the University of Iowa's master of fine arts program in 1940. She moved to Mexico in 1946, where she would later become a citizen and stay until her death.
Inspired by the interests of the Mexican Social Realism movement and by the inequality experienced by Catlett herself, her figurative work centered around the African American experience. Specifically addressing feminism and visibility of the disenfranchised and the poor, Catlett used her art to stimulate and reflect the struggles of African American women while also celebrating their beauty and existence.
In "Homage to Black Women Poets," the artist presents a rendering of the female body in a triumphant posture, celebratory of the work of women of color in literature. The work also speaks more broadly about Catlett's commitment to the Civil Rights movement. The voluptuous, mahogany sculpture stands strong with the raised fist, a bodily gesture historically related to the expression of the solidarity, resistance and empowerment of African American people.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection, gift of Nick Cave in honor of Matthew Mascotte
Nick Cave (b. 1959, Fulton, Missouri) works within a variety of disciplines from installation, sculpture, performance and video. The artist is widely known for his performative "Sound Suits," embellished costumes that hide the identity of the wearer. These whimsical suits often incorporate found objects and are named for the various auditory qualities produced when a wearer moves in them. They were originally developed in reaction to the infamous beating of Rodney King by police in 1991: the artist considered the vulnerability of African American males in public and created the suits as an armor that protected the wearer by obscuring any trace of identity. Race, gender and class are hidden, forbidding viewers from prejudice or judgement.
Performed live or in film, the Sound Suits project displays new identities of fantastical, vibrantly colored creatures. Here, the suits are performed to showcase the surprising effects of movement through dancing, rolling, jumping and twisting.
SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection, gift of Dr. Earle W. Newton
Paul Sandby (b. 1731, Nottingham, U.K., d. 1809, London, U.K.) was a British map-maker, landscape painter and founding member of the Royal Academy in 1768. Sandby had a healthy disregard for the artist William Hogarth, an established artist known for his social commentary on bourgeois values of the time.
Sandby's animosity towards the older Hogarth was likely born out of contempt for the latter’s lack of education and his "pretensions as an arbiter of taste." Sandby anonymously published a scathing, satirical series of eight prints titled "The Analysis of Deformity" in 1753 and 1754 as a direct response to Hogarth’s treatise "The Analysis of Beauty." These satirical works stand in sharp contrast to Sandby’s larger oeuvre, which consists of masterly drawn, idealized representations of the English landscape.
The painting "A Midnight Modern Conversation" is an almost exact copy of Hogarth’s etching of the same title, which depicts a drunkenly debauched scene in a tavern. Sandby, however, replaces every human figure with an animal. This anamorphic inversion heightens the social commentary, as the representation of humans as animals are intended to be derogatory and a slur. In the context of this exhibition, seen in relation to contemporary works of art, the painting takes on a different meaning, and is perhaps more playful, which shifts its overdrawn moralistic intention.
Courtesy of the artist and Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York
Frances Goodman (b. 1975, Johannesburg, South Africa) is a Johannesburg-based artist whose works in sculpture, installation, painting, photography and drawing engage with questions of female identity and the anxieties of beauty, desire and consumption. Goodman’s acrylic nail sculptures, including "Swoon," are simultaneously monstrous and seductive in nature, taking on the form of scaly and slithering predators that in reality are inert and fragile shells.
By playing upon the contrast of material and appearance in "Swoon," Goodman reveals the dual function of fake nails as both prosthetic and aesthetic additions to the female form. While the human nail, like the animal claw, has historically been used as a weapon and tool, it primarily serves today as a site and signifier of beauty, maintenance and identity across culture, class, race, age and, more recently, gender.
Courtesy of the artist, Guadalajara
Colectivo Arrogante Albino [Arrogant Albino Collective] was formed in 2017 as an actors training group, in Guadalajara, Mexico. It evolved into a more complex, collaborative space, to the point where they created a play for theater. Since then, they have presented several performance and theatrical pieces in places like Mexico City, Mexico, and Barcelona, Spain. Using costumes, props or custom environments, the collective has developed powerful performatic events sharing their concern on issues around identity, queer subjectivities and feminism while also investigating the nature of power relations.
For "I See You," Hector Jiménez and Alejandro Mendicuti, co-founders and participants of the collective, have created a special performance taking into consideration the exhibition’s interest in the body. Their performance will occur only once, within the limits of a stage specially created for the show. After that, the stage will remain empty. Visitors are encouraged to take the place of the performers.
Courtesy of the artist and Patron Gallery, Chicago
Nick van Woert (b. 1979, Reno, Nevada) is a Brooklyn-based artist originally trained as an architect before transitioning into making art. Van Woert’s works are sculptural compositions that discuss the nature of materials and their capacity to affect the viewer through visual qualities. He also alludes to the representation of human forms throughout art history by deconstructing and manipulating stereotypical representations of the body.
The artist uses a range of domestic materials or preexisting objects, which then are transformed with resin, polyurethane and electrolysis, among other materials and processes. The resulting figures are segmented, encapsulated or covered with a new texture, establishing a dialogue between the former object and the new condition in which it exists. This relates directly to the artist’s interest in reflecting on urban living conditions in the modern world as he cleverly questions the nature and surroundings of the body.
Courtesy of the artist and Patron Gallery, Chicago
Nick van Woert (b. 1979, Reno, Nevada) is a Brooklyn-based artist originally trained as an architect before transitioning into making art. Van Woert’s works are sculptural compositions that discuss the nature of materials and their capacity to affect the viewer through visual qualities. He also alludes to the representation of human forms throughout art history by deconstructing and manipulating stereotypical representations of the body.
The artist uses a range of domestic materials or preexisting objects, which then are transformed with resin, polyurethane and electrolysis, among other materials and processes. The resulting figures are segmented, encapsulated or covered with a new texture, establishing a dialogue between the former object and the new condition in which it exists. This relates directly to the artist’s interest in reflecting on urban living conditions in the modern world as he cleverly questions the nature and surroundings of the body.
SCAD Museum of Art permanent collection, gift of Shirrel Rhoades
Francesca Woodman (b. 1958, Denver, Colorado; d. 1981, New York, New York) was an American photographer best known for her prolific body of work featuring surrealistic self-portraits, still lifes and photos of dilapidated interior spaces. Throughout her short artistic career, Woodman frequently used the female body, whether her own or a model’s, in close collaboration with architectural elements and objects from the natural world. She produced complex, humorous and profound compositions that complicated and questioned long-held notions of the female form in photographic space.
In "Talking to Vince," Woodman positions herself in a cramped corner, her back up against the wall. As her eyes coolly address the camera, her mouth struggles to open wide enough for a transparent, coiled object to either enter or escape her lips. The title refers to Woodman’s partner, Vince, and suggests themes of partnership, communication and interpersonal conflict.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s (b. 1977, Chicago, Illinois) practice involves virtuosic drawing and painting of disparate elements to create uncanny portraits that investigate familial relationships, popular culture and personal narrative. The artist uses photographic references to create images that reveal the elements of lived experience that informs identity.
In "Bang," Quinn renders a portrait of a mysterious subject in a military helmet, obscured by various facial features or humorous elements like a clown nose, collaged from disparate sources. This intimate portrait sheds light on the contradictions and layers of identity. In it, the essence of a person is expressed through fractured pieces.
Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin gallery, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul
Tony Oursler (b. 1957, New York, New York) is a multi-media artist who merges moving images with sculptural forms and space to create works that investigate human-media relationships in terms of perception, presence, empathy and agency. "CV(15)" and "IDE…", as multi-media installations, depict amalgamated faces overlain with nodes, grids and other units of technological measurement.
As facial recognition technologies become increasingly sophisticated and adept at discerning, interpreting and surveilling human emotion and behavior through bodily gesture and expression, Oursler’s hybridized installations invite the viewer to shift their perspective from surveilled subject to that of a machine during its attempt to map the body and, as a consequence, decipher the foreign language of human emotion.
Collection of David H. Brolliet, Geneva, Switzerland
Reza Aramesh (b. 1970, Awhaz, Iran) was born in Iran and has lived abroad since his teenage years. He currently lives and works in London, U.K. His practice is primarily concerned with the circulation and consumption of images of war and violence. Each of his works refers to an exact moment in history, recorded by photojournalists and sent into the world. Aramesh recreates this image and translates it into a new context. "Action 191: at 6:20 pm Sunday 2 April 2006," is the fifth of an ongoing series of 12 marble sculptures, "Site of the Fall — Study of the Renaissance Garden."
The series of works considers the Renaissance garden as a site of order and beauty, whilst also interrogating the iconography of suffering represented in Western art history. These works are sculpted from precious marble, predominantly used to represent white skin during the Renaissance period. Aramesh works with models who are from backgrounds that have been affected by oppression in recent time, and thus with affinity to the subject matter addressed. In the context of the history of the American South, the work also invokes the specter of slavery. Aramesh further grounds the work in a local context through the inclusion of vernacular plants in the garden that surrounds the sculpture.
Presented by the SCAD Museum of Art, the group exhibition "I See You" considers the human body as terrain that is constantly subject to different forces. Through geographical, economic, political, historical, psychological and social dynamics, the body is pressured — even physically affected — by the weight of abstract structures. This exhibition explores the ways in which these factors manifest in and around the body, and offers processes of identification, awareness and visibility as possible paths to deflate such urgencies. In presenting a constellation of works that investigate fluctuating identities and vulnerabilities, "I See You" offers a rich reading in regard to the limits and functions of the body.
Featured in the Pamela Elaine Poetter Gallery, the exhibition invites viewers to explore groupings of sculpture, installation, two-dimensional works and a rich selection of film. The exhibition's title emphasizes a reciprocal mode of the gaze, or the active way in which viewers look upon representations of another’s body. In turn, the act of seeing another serves as a participatory action and acknowledges the artist’s subjective perspective.
The exhibition uses contemporary artwork as well as historical pieces from the museum’s permanent collection to explore the impact of social stressors on the human body. This includes selected works from the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art by artists of varying backgrounds who operated within and against oppressive social systems. Additionally, contemporary artists both conceal and reveal by utilizing fragmented or imagined bodies in their work. The incomplete body's essence is challenged through impermanence, metamorphosis or allusion of skin through unexpected material. Through their representations of and investigations into the human form, these artists offer reflections of their own identities and those apart from their own.
"I See You" uses the notion of the post-human body, one that is no longer pure, whole or self-contained, but instead is constantly in transit, colonized, dispossessed or even dematerialized. From this perspective, the presented works offer multifaceted renderings of the body related to specific notions of intersectionality.
The exhibition is curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg, head curator; Humberto Moro, curator; and Ben Tollefson, assistant curator of SCAD exhibitions.
Artists include:
Bas Jan Ader
Colectivo Arrogante Albino
Reza Aramesh
Andres Bedoya
Elizabeth Catlett
Nick Cave
Robert S. Duncanson
Frances Goodman
Bharti Kher
Charles LeDray
Hannah Levy
Mary Edmonia Lewis
Ana Mendieta
Carlos Motta
Eadweard Muybridge
Bruce Nauman
Tony Oursler
Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Paul Sandby
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Cindy Sherman
Matthew Stone
Superflex
Nick van Woert
Francesca Woodman
A revolutionary force in the fashion industry for seven decades, indomitable 95-year-old designer Pierre Cardin continues at the helm of his creative enterprises and has earned numerous accolades for his contributions to fashion and humanitarian causes. In 2008, Cardin was honored with the SCAD Étoile for his contributions to the fields of fashion and design as well as his role in the historic restoration and cultural life of the medieval village of Lacoste, site of the university's study-abroad location in France. Best known for his 1960s space-age style, Cardin has pushed the boundaries of fashion by exploring new materials and silhouettes. In addition to his contributions to fashion, Cardin is a design innovator whose pursuits extend to accessories, costume design, jewelry, product design, fragrances, furniture, theatrical production and more.
