| HYGIENE |
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| EXHIBITIONS |
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Garth Clark Gallery, NY. USA Galerie Karen Fribe, Mannheim, Germany Ujazdowski Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland Periscope Gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel Ram Galeri, Oslo, Norway |
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The "Hygiene" series is the second stage in a speculative interpretation of the scatological object, forms which are designed to mediate between the human body and its "functions". This work represents my continuing interest in exploring the relationships between artistic and industrial modes of production and the potential eroticism in relations between the human and the mechanical. The idea of cleanliness and protection imposes specific conditions on related forms and objects, requirements which render them simultaneously intimate and impersonal. The forms of the "Hygiene" series are created primarily in vitreous china, a material which exudes archetypical associations with sanitary ware. Each of the works in this series are multiples of identical forms in various accumulations, a strategy followed for conceptual and esthetic ends. My intention is to disassociate the appearance of the work from any hand made processes and avoid the quasi-uniqueness of art studio production. This seems appropriate both to suggest the industrial modes of production typically involved in the manufacture of sanitary objects and to simulate the utilization of such objects in public health applications. New diseases and unsettled social mores have de-stabilized concepts of hygiene, sexuality, and safety. We live in an era when the presumed immutability of the human body itself is called into question by emerging techniques of genetic manipulation and cybernetic simulation. Perhaps this accounts for some of the speculative, erotic, and associative elements which have been drawn into these forms. A related intention of the work is to entice a sensual response to the forms, an impulse which is blunted by their scatological associations as well as their formal setting in an art presentation space. Marek Cecula 1996. |