Early figurative artists paved the way for contemporary body-centric art along gender-related lines. Women shed their clothes to model for the likes of Rubens, Ingres, Manet, and Rodin but rarely got a chance to turn the tables. The stereotypical image of a bearded artist hovering over a female subject begged to be updated, but change didn’t happen overnight. From the turn of the 20th century and beyond, Camille Claudel, Annie Brigman, Frida Kahlo, and Ana Mendieta boldly formed the ranks of female figurative artists. Willem von Gloeden, Thomas Eakins, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras turned their attention to men. The genre sped off in an array of directions, crashing through gender, racial, and social barriers. Despite progress in today’s art world, teachers have been fired for showing slides of Michelangelo’s “David,” and women are fighting for control of their own bodies.
The artists in this month’s Out of Body exhibition infuse figurative art with compelling new narratives, creating distinctive riffs on traditions past. Working with video, ceramics, textiles, mixed media, and painting, they deconstruct the human form and shape it into something reflecting their unique worldview. Tracking a body in motion on an urban street, revisiting childhood traumas, fashioning torsos and limbs from burlap and clay, and weighing freedoms and taboos through figurative imagery, applicants for NOT REAL ART’s biennial grant investigate the symbiotic relationship between physical and emotional spaces. Referencing artists who came before them, they use figurative art to explore what it means to exist on a sentient and physical level and give insights into navigating a world in flux.
View Out of Body via the button below, then scroll down for details about the participating artists and their work.
Embodied Emotions
In the book The Body Keeps the Score, Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk emphasized the connection between the body and emotions. Andrea Marmol’s haunting mixed-media piece, “The Purge,” featuring a woman doubled over in anguish, explores the connection between inner trauma and physical form. Calla Donofrio’s charged tableau of a woman clutching a lifeline while being struck by lightning addresses feelings of powerlessness in an uncertain world. “Cocoon,” a ceremony performed underneath an Ahn Lee sculpture, references the grief caused by a history of anti-Chinese sentiment in California using the metaphor of a silkworm’s cocoon. B Dukes’s self-portrait collage reveals the physical scars of gender-affirming surgery and the internal and external landscapes behind it. Hikaru Cho’s surreal portrait, “Intimacy,” explores the complexities of physical and emotional closeness. “Point Nemo,” Mako Lomadze’s Rousseau-like painting of a nude woman perched in a darkened jungle, evokes feelings of vulnerability and loneliness.
Form, Movement, and Space
Kizzy Kalu’s vibrant series “We Think. We Are.” gives a nod to Robert Longo while addressing the challenges of fitting in as a “half-Uruguayan, half-Nigerian first-generation American.” MJ Bentley’s frank portrait, “Zander,” shot from above in a pristine white space, conveys a sense of intimacy and trust between artist and subject while presenting a queer woman’s view of a male nude. Le Xi’s self-portrait video traces the movement of his body jogging down the yellow line of an urban street to make a layered statement about man and the environment. Ja intersperses modern dance movements with life drawing in a performance set to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” In her series, “The Woman Who Once Had Wings,” Suzanne Gainer explores the constrictive process of aging by placing herself in confined spaces. “Shadow Form — The Human Body’s Secret Life,” a large-scale installation by Jessalyn Finch, investigates body dysmorphia, identity, and self through life-size figurative charcoal drawings.
Deconstructing the Body
Rather than depicting the body as a whole, a number of artists break down it into fragments. Julie Wu uses conjoined ceramic hands to describe the rupture between body and soul at death. Efrat Baler-Moses pairs a drawing of a fetus in the womb with disembodied legs to address body autonomy and reproductive rights. Megan Morgan’s blood-red torso from burlap and recycled paint echoes Walt Whitman’s view that all bodies are created equal. In her textile installation, “I Know You Love Me for My Brain,” Linda Jurkiewicz uses truncated female forms splayed across a wall to call out rampant inequities in a post-feminist society. Michael Coppage’s sculpture “Get Down on Your Knees” makes a forceful statement about political oppression and defiance through a kneeling half-figure in bronze. Vincent Frimpong uses the human hand as an instrument to weigh his African roots in the wheel-like sculpture “Weight of Liberty.”
References and Inspiration
James Russell May’s luminous painting, “Reverie,” evokes the whimsical abandon of A Midsummer Night’s Dream while drawing inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch. Jacob Clayton’s introspective “Self Portrait | Vitruvian Tran” appropriates a Da Vinci drawing to illustrate the anguish of being born in the wrong body. Playing with “magick” and folklore, Mollie Kellogg combines selfies submitted by women invited to “get their inner witch on.” Jessica Doe uses poetry and body painting to address harsh truths in Native history and life. Influenced by horror films, Francis Bacon, and Artemisia Gentileschi, Mo Ola wrestles with power and identity issues by pulling his figures inside out. Giving traditional media a contemporary spin, Layla Klinger combines an intimate moment from queer life with a wry Hebrew title in the hand-embroidered “Matay Tagi'I.” In her painting “Still Under the Time,” Manuela Viera-Gallo conveys her personal quest for empowerment through the story of a persecuted 16th-century noblewoman, Beatrice Cenci.
All photos published with permission of the artist(s); featured graphics for Out of Body by David Schwartz.