Photoshop trickery is so commonly used to improve bodies and faces, alter settings, or create convincing composites, that most of us take it for granted. Dutch artist Ruud van Empel intentionally goes overboard in manipulated works that are too eerily perfect or just subtly off.
Van Empel assembles his figures and scenes from bits and pieces of disparate images—dressed mannequins, faces, body parts, flowers. Colors are pumped up and settings digitally staged to create these surreal but believable fictions.
A number of new works in his current show at Jackson Fine Art, through November 29, are a continuation of his earlier series involving children, who all have blank expressions and flawless ebony or ivory skin. A nude black girl stands sideways amid an allover field of yellow flowers; the sparkling blue eyes of a blonde Dresden-dollish girl float in a sea of milky white skin.
It’s not clear whether van Empel is commenting on artificiality and physical ideals, or simply showing off his technical prowess. He doesn’t offer answers, only luscious, saturated color, and studies in contrast, monochrome, or pattern.
The most compelling work in the show has all these same qualities, yet looks nothing like the others. Both figurative and abstract, it is a still life from 2014 of a smorgasbord of raw, freshly butchered meat. A bisected pig’s head sits front and center, its cranial contents laid bare. The head faces back, as if the animal were surveying its deconstructed self. A popped-out eyeball has rolled off to the side and seems to stare at the viewer—j’accuse. Arranged behind it are piles of carved cuts and a slab of aged beef. Squishy-looking innards are dropped here and draped there. The pattern of marbled flesh continues in the marble table and backsplash. From a distance, the image looks painterly, with fat and blood glistening and striated muscle suggesting brushstrokes.
The work’s fleshy hues are echoed in two images, also from 2014, a nude women posed against peachy pink backgrounds. Their slender bodies are youthful but their heads clearly belong to other, likely older, women. Like a Mannerist painting, the proportions and perspective are a little off. Instead of enhancing their attributes, Van Empel has made these women exceedingly ordinary. Ultimately, all of van Empel’s works are still lifes, his subjects and models to be arranged and depicted according to his whims.
Image and Object: Erin Shirreff, Sara VanDerBeek, and Catherine Wagner
Three notable shows in Northern California this summer provide examples of how sculpture, and the idea of sculpture, are explored in photo-based work: Erin Shirreff, Sara VanDerBeek, and Catherine Wagner each make photo-based art and objects that are deeply informed by sculptural concerns.
Best of 2016
Formed in 1963 by 11 photographers who recognized the necessity of “a forum to address the underrepresentation of African Americans in their field,” the Kamoinge Workshop gave its members a sense of solidarity and support in a period when black Americans were the frequent subject of mainstream media coverage but rarely its author.
Vasantha Yogananthan: Coming of Age in New Orleans
Friendship, love, and sadness percolate through these photographs of children at play.
Helmut Newton: Fact and Fiction | MOP Foundation, A Coruña, Spain
Helmut Newton is a formidable influence in contemp...
Debi Cornwall: New-Style Documentarian
In a trilogy about the American condition, the Prix Elysée-winning photographer employs indirection, inviting viewers to consider what lies outside the frame.
Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler is a provocative artist for politici...
Newly discovered images by Ernest Cole, Daido Moriyama’s magazine work, and Cindy Sherman’s unnerving "self-portraits"
A discovery of a large cache of negatives by Ernest Cole led to a new book, The True America.
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Multimedia Mythmaker
At the Brooklyn Museum, the inquisitive Cuban-born artist presents work in photography, assemblage, performance, and painting.
Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy | International Center of Photography, New York City
Love, Socrates explains in Symposium, is a form of...
Roxana Marcoci
MoMA's senior photography curator talks about her cross-disciplinary approach to curatorial work, Wolfgang Tillmans, An-My Lê, and more.
The Shifting Borders of Photojournalism and Fine Art Photography
Disturbed by the lack of a visual record of Americ...
Dan Cooney
There are over 250 galleries in Chelsea, observes ...