People Sticking Their Heads in Things
Molly Kleiman
Why are so many artists sticking their heads in things at the moment? There is something intrinsically, humanly funny about it. But it’s also an image of disaffection, solitude, ignorance, and even perversion. Is it a quintessentially postmodern gesture–the ultimate ironic self-effacement? Is it an abject, floppy acting out of exasperation–a pathetic rebellion against… whatever, dude? Are we retreating to the dark safe start of the womb, becoming a society of ostriches, revealing our obsessive voyeurism? These artists have their own ideas.
[1] Perhaps the most famous of these images, Robert Gober’s life-like plastic legs jut out from the wall. Not only his head is missing, but is entire body has been sliced off at the waist, or subsumed in the sheet rock, or locked on the other edge of the divide. Is the man dead? What’s happening on the other side of the wall?
[2] In Walead Beshty’s "Phenomenology of Shopping" series, we follow Beshty as he inserts himself into mall showrooms and appliance showcases. Head stuck now in a new toilet seat that hangs in a gentle row with its sterile brothers at Target, now buried in an eyelet pillowcase in a Filene’s fake floral bedroom. His body follows, hilariously slack, deflated.
[3] Like Beshty, Vlatka Horvat is the protagonist of her photo documentary insertions. In her Searching series, Horvat peers through the hedge, body taut; she dunks her face into a bucket, her legs so straight.
[4] Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz photograph fantastical snow globes. Traveler 135 at Night lets us peer at several winter wanderers, their heads stuffed in tree holes–their poses are silly (plus, they’re in a snow globe!). And yet, how lonely they are.
[5] Grady Gerbracht describes a discovery he made while doing his daily commute: "As I pass along the station’s corridors I have noticed a curious hole in the low ceiling. This peculiar aperture became a landmark for me. It seemed to have no obvious function, so, I invented one for it."
[6] Derrick Adams’ tailed figures are conspicuously colorful and disarmingly cartoonish. This Way and That Way, 2003, appears at first as a lovely, pink, young girl riding on a older man’s (dad’s?) shoulders, his head blocked by her body. His black tail curves gracefully. But this cannot be his back as his tuxedo buttons and tie are in full view. And if that’s not his back, then that ain’t no tail. And his head…
Image gallery
Walead Beshty, The Phenomenology of Shopping (Filenes, Danbury Mall, CT), 2001-2003 Color photograph face-mounted to Plexiglas on display box 68 x 47 3/4 inches Edition of 2 + AP.
Vlatka Horvat, Searching #8, 2003. C-Print, 16 x 20 inches
Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz. Traveler 135 at Night, 2004. C-Print 40 x 33 inches. Edition of 5. Courtesy of the artists and P.P.O.W. Gallery.-
Grady Gerbracht, from his "MTA Series."
Derrick Adams, This Way and That Way, 2003, drawing from Production Elements, mixed media on paper, 11x 14 in.
