Rachael: Do you like our owl?
Deckard: It’s artificial?
Rachael: Of course it is.
Deckard: Must be expensive.
Rachael: Very.

-from Blade Runner

Frank Benson, "Human Statue (Jessie)"

What is it like to be a 3D scanner capturing a beautiful woman? When I meet it someday on Cleverbot, this is what I will ask the Rapid Prototyping apparatus behind Frank Benson’s Human Statue (Jessie), now up at Taxter & Spengemann.  Do the quantifying calculations of volumes, occlusions, curves, and folds ever amount to a qualitative response, the way innumerable neural complexity leads to consciousness?

And what is it like to be a 3D printing machine that sculpts a beautiful model? It is the conduit between image processing data and the subsequent tantalizing output. On which end is the “art?” (Irrefutably sculpture, Human Statue still carries the Sol LeWitt torch, as do Cory Arcangel’s irrefutable prints of Photoshop gradients, where instructions are at least as important as their result.)

Does it matter that the 3D machines are blind? Blindly faithful to the data being processed, and blindly committed to the sculptural parts, in spite of the whole? We think of another screenplay interrogation, that of Godard’s Contempt, when the staggeringly beautiful Camille submits to Paul for a piecemeal appraisal of her body, from toes to face, just like the layer-by-layer construction of the rapidly prototyped object – something rapidly approaching “consumer version.” Asking him to view her from the mirror, Camille directs Paul to the picturesque  reflection of herself, just bundles of lightwaves, rather than the warm, corporeal body laying next to him. To each question, he answers in a solemn affirmative.

“Can you see my feet in the mirror? Do you think they’re pretty?
And my ankles, do you like them?
Do you like my knees, too?
And my thighs?
Can you see my behind in the mirror?
Do you think my buttocks are pretty?
And my breasts, do you like them? What do you like best, my breasts or my nipples?
And my shoulders, you like them?
And my arms, do you like them?
And my face? Everything? My mouth, my eyes, my nose, my ears?
So you love me totally?”

The transubstantiation, where Camille regains her body and resumes animation, occurs midway through the exchange, when she asks, “Do you want me to kneel down?”

Which might be the question frozen in the pursed lips of Human Statue (Jessie). Atop a small pedestal, Jessie is elevated just slightly above eye contact. You can see her eyes from the side, but her platelike shades forbid a frontal view. These shades are like artifacts from the 1980s: the decade when rapid protyping first emerged, the decade of Nagel, and the decade of Blade Runner. The shades cover much of her face, just as the designer gown, asymetrically wrapped around her torso, covers much of her body. The gown conceals her nudity, while the shades conceal her eyes – the windows to the soul.  In this aspect, Human Statue (Jessie) equates nudity with humanity, or at least an aspect of it.

Frank Benson, "Human Statue (Jessie)"

Iconic Patrick Nagel

The Aphrodite of Cnidus was nude and infamously, seductively lifelike enough to get molested by a surprise overnight guest. It inspired many other nude Venuses, each mimicking its contrapposto stance and hands raised to cover “the naughty bits.” The Venus of Arles, however, is clothed, which frees up her hands for less purposeful expression.

Frank Benson, "Human Statue (Jessie)"

Human Statue (Jessie) folds her hands, palms upward, in front of her waist. They correspond to the overturned urn at her feet, but they seem like the ballerina’s First Position (despite the feet). Her pose is uncomfortably stiff, like a mannequin, yet her face is so dimensional and richly textured – unlike the marmoreal smoothness of her Venus predecessors – that you might hold your breath while watching for hers.

I've Got a Broken Face: Image by Johnny Misheff for T Magazine

-Especially if you’ve met her! The model is Jessie Gold, an artist, dancer, choreographer, and musician in NYC by way of Miami. She’s one of the most striking beauties in the New York art worlds, and by selecting her, Frank Benson is also proposing a new model with subcultural valence for the evolving definitions and cults of beauty.

Boris Vallejo, "Pygmalion and Galatea," 1988

With no access to her eyes, my gaze drops to her lips.  A masterpiece of nature in real life, they are plump and textured here, and exaggerated by the metallic face paint the real Jessie wore for the image capture. Looking at these lips reminds us of kissing, of resuscitation, and of course, speaking. My mind wanders to Mona Aamons Monzano, the composite woman and “blonde Negro” of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle: “She was as brown as chocolate. Her hair was like golden flax.” Mona dies when she immediately freezes to death by bringing to her lips the Ice-9 contaminant from the soil beneath her.  Mona’s last movement was rising from a kneeling position.

“Would you wish any of these alive again, if you could? Answer me quickly. “Not quick enough with your answer,” she called playfully, after half a minute had passed. And, still laughing a little, she touched her finger to the ground, straightened up, and touched the finger to her lips and died.

Frank Benson, "Human Statue (Jessie)" --- "I looked down and saw what I was not meant to see. Mona had slipped off her sandal. Her small brown foot was bare."

John Russell and Fabienne Audéoud performing at the opening of After Shelley Duvall ’72
(Frogs on the High Line) curated by Bjarne Melgaard, at Maccarone, NYC:

Last weekend, I read about a size-8 model ridiculed on Australia’s Next Top Model, and I read about an aging woman who died after she injected her own face with hot beef fat.  And last weekend, I learned about illustrator Jonathon Rosen’s cover for a book about beauty.  Published with MIT press, the book is The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty by Bernadette Wegenstein, Director of the Center for Advanced Media Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.  (Last weekend, I also learned that Paul Ha will be the new director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center.)

Jonathon Rosen's cover for "The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty"

Like something out of the Mütter Museum or the workshop of an alchemist moonlighting in phrenology, Rosen’s haunting, surgical set-up photo reminds me of fairy tales, dentist nightmares, Tim Hawkinson’s Emotor, and the more distressing final moments of A Clockwork Orange. Having taken courses with Jonathon Rosen myself, though not those new courses he teaches now, I’d say those are undeniable relations to uncover in his proto-bionic, playful aesthetic.

Tim Hawkinson, "Emotor," 2002

Making Faces

More on beauty later this week when I get to Frank Benson’s Human Statue (Jessie) at Taxter and Spengemann Gallery.

SVA alum Lisa Kirk is having another big moment.  Her solo show, If You See Something, opened last night at LES gallery Invisible-Exports (also my gallery, duh).  Her work will be included in The Influentials, opening tonight at SVA’s Visual Arts Gallery, curated by SVA faculty member Amy Smith-Stewart, one of my favorite New York curators (and roving gallerists).  For that show, which pairs successful women alumni with their recognized saints, Lisa Kirk is bringing the elusive and exclusive David Hammons.  Amazing!

Meanwhile, her Backyard Adversaries video installation is up in Manhattan’s own backyard, Governors Island.  It’s part of the NYEAF Wave(form)s – Exhibition of Electronic Art on Governors Island.

The Backyard Adversaries HD projections – four of them, projected onto stretched canvases, and randomly leaping from screen to screen – are supernaturally crisp and dimensional.  Who knew that an artist specializing in perfumes, pipe bombs, and cosmetic projectiles could also be a naturalist cinematographer?  White light shimmers from the surface of a crystal-clear creek, and the distant sun seems to vaporize outlying leaves among the overhead foliage.  As the camera follows two children at a time through their outdoor adventure, we little feet navigating slippery rocks and child-eye-level perspectives as the children arm themselves with canvas masks and a shared plastic machine gun.  Like in Kurosawa’s Rashomon, we hear varied interpretations of the mise en scene, all in the disinterested, yet tender and sympathetic voices of grade school storytellers.  It reminded me of the opening narration from GZA’s Liquid Swords album, minus the music, and while watching, I mind watched itself unscroll decades of associations: Bridge to Terabithia, Childrens’ Crusades, Lord of the Flies, Wyeth’s “Christina’s World,” Robert Gober’s installations, and Lewis and Clark.

The space itself seems decayed when the projections go bright enough to reveal shale slabs of paint have cracked and fallen from the walls.  We also see the complex rigging of projectors on the ceiling, which I took as a testament to Harvestwork’s A/V availability.  That decayed space, however, fits with the post-apocalyptic recovery of Backyard Adversaries, in which the child heroes appear unsupervised and unaccompanied (not counting the camerawoman), with no neighbors and no urban encroachment.

Speaking of, getting to Governors Island was much easier than I expected.  Only 40 minutes total from Chelsea, and the ferry ride is quick and fun.  Remember to board at the rear if you want a view of Governors Island as you approach, because the ferry turns around before heading south.  When you disembark, turn a sharp left and keep going for about 10 minutes.  When you get to the kayak rental, turn soft right, up the bumpy path and walk up toward St. Cornelius Chapel.  Just before the chapel, there’s a yellow house (over yonder, that’s where my baby stay).  Go in.  The NYEAF signage is inadequate, and I got lost.  Now you won’t!