Face
dal 20/6/2007 al 10/8/2007
Segnalato da
Zone Chelsea Center for the Arts
Silvana Agostoni
Steven Assael
Monique Bauman
Santiago Cal
Rainer Judd
Kirsten Justesen
Mark Mann
Renaud Muraire
Osvaldo Romberg
Burton Silverman
Jean-Manuel Simoes
Valentin Stefanoff
Nina Kovacheva
20/6/2007
Face
Zone Chelsea Center for the Arts, New York
Scavenging Identity
Scavenging Identity
ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts is proud to present FACE: Scavenging
Identity, exploring the margins of mainstream portrait genre. Traditional
portraiture is a mix of realism and artifice, public persona and private
life, interior and exterior. It entails subtle negotiations between
artist and model, even when the two are nominally the same. The
international artists in this compact but wide-ranging exhibition take a
more unorthodox approach, but they retain the perennial fascination with
human nature. They challenge the conventions of the genre using a variety
of mediums, including painting, collage, sculpture, photography and video.
Today, traditional social structures—once defined by nationality, class and
gender—have necessarily given way to more individual and improvisational
ways of constructing identity.
Much of the work uncovers layers of meaning by focusing on human skin,
from the distended belly of a pregnant woman to the leathery remains of a
fetish-draped corpse. Some of the artists explore the physical limits of
the body with close-ups so extreme that skin and hair become features in
alien landscapes, or present parasitic forms that threaten our autonomy.
Others emphasize theatricality and the rituals of self-presentation,
whether in Africa or American subcultures. Some create oneiric
installations or provide space for the unleashing of raw emotion and the
temporary disarrangement of the public face. They appropriate magazines
for pictorial journals that blur the line between autobiography and
image-making, or old master images to break them down into color charts.
This juxtaposition of works by both established and emerging artists
creates an exciting matrix for fresh perspectives on visual anthropology.
Artists are: Silvana Agostoni, Steven Assael, Monique Bauman, Santiago Cal,
Rainer Judd, Kirsten Justesen, Mark Mann, Renaud Muraire, Osvaldo Romberg,
Burton Silverman, Jean-Manuel Simoes and Valentin Stefanoff & Nina
Kovacheva.
Image: Untitled (After van Dyck),1999 Oil on canvas, 47 x 40 inches Osvaldo Romberg
Zone Chelsea Center for the Arts
601 West 26th Street - New york