Follicularly
challenged
Hair, an example of
bodily detritus like flakes of old, dry skin or finger and toe nail clippings,
has been used as a conceptual vehicle or “jumping off” point for a number of
artists for a number of years now. Indeed, the body itself, as well as bodily
fluids and the everyday physicality of the body’s various movements and
gestures, has also been featured as object and/or subject.
Bruce Nauman, sculptor, photographer and performance artist, once
filmed himself as he methodically, sequentially applied four different colors
of body paint (white, red, green, and black) to his own body. He also once
applied black theatrical makeup just to his testicles — the process of which
he again filmed and titled Black Balls.
In the 1960s and ’70s,
more and more artists were exploring new materials and alternative identities.
Cuban-born American sculptor, performance and video artist Ana Mendieta created a somewhat similar piece, which she
parenthetically entitled Cosmetic Facial
Variations. The piece consisted of a suite of four photographs documenting herself with different wigs and facial makeup. And how can we forget the work of Jeanne Dunning who, among other
projects, completed a series of photographs in the late 1980s showcasing the
backs of women’s heads — in other words, their differently colored heads of hair?
It was in the spirit
of these recognizable connections within the artistic continuum that we
ventured into Mauro Cringoli’sHair Die, an exhibition of images “digitally captured by camera and
then digitally edited and digitally colored,” now showing at A/V.
But therein also
lies the rub: unlike any of the aforementioned artists, nowhere in Cringoli’s work is any sense of the personal, or even a
person, to be found — unless, of course, you consider his statement, which
makes reference to the “everyday act of removing hair from
the drain and chucking it … onto the wall or on the side of the tub.” While
perhaps not really an everyday act nor even one executed as such, the salient
point for Cringoli is that the shapes these clumps
take, like individual snowflakes, are never repeated.
OK…but
so what? What are we to “get” or experience from viewing these digital
derivations? These images
may not integrate our awareness of our sensations or allow for any
philosophical-spiritual permutations (or whatever else you might be looking
for). But they do, however, belie their medium — photography — in that they
appear to be abstract drawings that have been turned into three-dimensional objets d’art via their slick, shiny surfacescreated to adorn otherwise austere
white walls.
That said, that
doesn’t mean they’re not worth considering. Indeed, if you spend a little time
with them and let your imagination wander, they could become something else …
say, perhaps, some kind of spirograph-like
filigree-work or an amoebic undersea life-form squirming beneath the lens of a
high-powered microscope. In this sense, like the no-repeat shapes, the
possibilities are endless.
Hair
Die through August 19 | A\V, 8 Public Market (second
floor), use N. Union Street
entrance | Gallery hours Thursday 7-10 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
423-0320, www.avspace.org.
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.
