Daily Archives: September 11, 2013

International Center of Photography: Pentheus & Girl Specimen Series

At our exhibit visit just last Tuesday at the International Center of Photography, I was amazed at the amount of complexity in a few art pieces. Most of them were very interesting but confused me, to say the least.

We came across Elliot Hundley’s piece called Pentheus, which consisted of extremely detailed figures attached to a canvas with long, thin steel nails. Hundley put a lot of his time and efforts into this single piece. Pentheus had hundreds of nails, individually holding its own letter, number, or human being. The collage also had words and photographs that bring the canvas to life. There are nude figures of both women and men. The background of the canvas isn’t blank, it has another picture of what appeared to be a man in a forest. There was also a single white bone sticking out near the edge. The magnifying glasses certainly gave it an even more unique touch to Pentheus. I wonder what it was meant to signify, maybe, the complexity of life itself. The little things in this canvas made it a unique treasure for many people to marvel at.

Pentheus- Elliot Hundley

There was also another interesting piece in the same area. Originally from Kenya, Wangechi Mutu created Girl Specimen Series, which consisted of ten pieces of artwork. Like Pentheus, each individual piece connected with each other to form one piece of artwork. In my eyes, I felt like each of these pieces were body parts, but in most of them body parts were included as well. For example, a frame of what appears to be lungs consisted of hands, legs, snakes, and animal skins, which were all interesting. Cut-outs of women in sexual positions were also included as well. There were pearls in some frames, which probably symbolized the fertility of women, thus making the title Girl Specimen Series a logical choice. The description says, “identity has been blown apart, now subject to input and bombardment on every level, from every direction.” This combination of pieces/body parts probably meant that both animals and humans make up of one organism. Below is one out of the ten frames that were in the complete artwork.

One out of the ten frames of artwork

Girl Specimen Series- Wangechi Mutu

Overall, it was an amazing experience. It definitely opened my eyes about museums. I hoped you enjoyed reading this, as I did writing this.

Sohei Nishino – New York 2006 (International Center of Photography)

Sohei Nishino of Japan made a cut-and-paste collage of many images of NYC and created kind of an “island” – which Manhattan is – with the water bordering all the skyscrapers and busy streets depicted in the middle of the photo. I was quite fascinated by his work on both NYC and Jerusalem, but being proud of the city that I’m from, I’ve gotta stick to attaching a photo of the Big Apple. I haven’t studied the photo geographically and whether all the buildings and parks are in their accurate places, but nonetheless, it’s very visually appealing.

If you look closely, you can see outskirts of central park, the empire state building, the Chrysler building, and other famous parts of the city. I think what perplexed me the most was why Nishino kept the entire collage in grayscale. Surely he had time to visit New York City and immerse himself in the city’s beauty; so why didn’t he capture the image as such? And along those lines, where did he even get these pictures? I began to think that maybe he had a giant horizon view of the city and had never visited; instead, he simply made cutouts of a bigger image that he had in his possession. I quickly let go of my conspiracy theory and chose to admire the artwork in front of me.

Maybe Nishino just wanted to appeal to the average looker. I mean, if someone was to look at New York City’s horizon for the first time (and not be a native of the United States), this person would most likely be viewing the skyline through a picture. A high-definition, 1080 x 720 pixel photo that looks completely real. A photo like that would make someone want to visit the city, not something like this collage. Nishino’s idea is very original, however, and probably cuts out the meaningless parts of the city – the collage gets right into the heart of Manhattan, emphasizing landmark by landmark as each street passes. I wish that the essence of New York didn’t have to rely on Manhattan so much in the collage, though. Focus on Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx… they’re all such key aspects of the city!

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