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ARTS MAGAZINE
November 1990
Review by Kathryn Hixson
Joe Ziolkowski's brilliantly seductive black-and-white photographs of
male nudes at Catherine Edelman (May 25-June 30) reveal the development
of this artist's concerns with the masculine body's ability to carry psychological
metaphor. Sensational enough to elicit the NEA's ire, Ziolkowski's earlier
photos of upside-down mena and women represented his subjects in uncompromisingly
manipulative poses. Though these shots successfully enunciated a specific
personal response to capture, the gimmick of gravity-reversal soon became
a tired metaphor for societal sexual entrapment (though they would translate
nicely into underwear ads). His newer work focuses more on the body's ability
to mutate-successfully-to emotional forces within himself in relation to
interpersonal activities. The photographs privilege the male body as object-his
choice of models is of the well-toned, generously endowed, handsome hunk.
The background is obliterated into whiteness, so that the subtle black-and-white
gradations of the representation of the male skin is highlighted, sumptuously
seductive. The positions of the figures start to represent the risk of
representation-one's head is gone in a back shot of a seated, hunched figure;
another is straining in a tense body-crunched crouch. In another image,
body parts of two males are interchangeable in a joint venture, their bodies
joining into a composite sculpture. Though Ziolkowski, in the spirit of
Weston, bell-pepperizes the male nude, he leaves open a space for interpretation
that Mapplethorpe refused. There is a spirit of communication between the
models, the artists, and the viewer that seems to decry a possibility of
interchange that necessarily involves touch-based on the individual experience
of the various participants. Though the pictures objectify and distance,
their uneasiness in this process urges communication.
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