Dates:
February 5 - April 10, 2011
Location:
Annenberg Gallery, Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building
Description:
While artists in the past explored and recorded the body as a means of understanding its structure and operation, in recent decades contemporary artists have increasingly employed representations of the body as a means to address issues about the nature of the self and subjective identity. This installation drawn primarily from PAFA’s permanent collection brings together over 30 works that reveal the innumerable ways that artists have focused on the human body since the 1950s. In contrast to the earlier academic concern with anatomy as a source of verifiable visual knowledge, this renewed interest in the body employs anatomical and medical imagery for differing philosophical ends. Understanding that the body is not a singular anatomical entity but is layered into a complex socio-political, scientific, and cultural network, contemporary artists now employ the human form in their work as a way of engaging questions about unity, fragmentation, and the mediation of the body in contemporary society.
Artists featured in this installation include: Sue Coe, Diane Edison, Michael Shelby Edwards, Rafael Ferrer, Gregory Gillespie, Ben Kamihira, Jenny Kanzler, Jules Kirschenbaum, Paul Lamantia, Rico Lebrun, Robert Lostutter, Philip Pearlstein, Paul Pletka, Honore Sharrer, Nancy Spero, Dorothea Tanning, Patricia Traub, John Wilde, Richard Wilt and others.
Curator:
Robert Cozzolino, Curator of Modern Art