BODY LANGUAGES
Mary Cobile – Untitled 2 (from Note to Self) 2005 29X20, Archival Inkjet Print Edition: 5
If the body is itself a complex structure, the meanings we project onto it are doubly complex. Our contemporary reading of the body, particularly the challenging issues of gender difference and identity, offer a fascinating opportunity for artists to explore such questions and share their insights with the public.
Through the powerful photographic works of Mary Coble and Robert Flynt, viewers may reflect on several related aspects of the power of language: its power to make things legible, and thus legitimate, as well as its power to inflict harm and its potential to be misread. Both Coble and Flynt achieve a nearly seamless conflation of text and image – which, after all, is the very basis of both conceptual art and scripted language. Taken together, they suggest that art and visual culture do not merely imitate life, they can chronicle and inspire it.
The exhibition was on display February 7, 2006 – March 12, 2006.