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THE NEW YORK TIMES, Friday, July 16, 1993.
Art In Review
"Snap!"
- Tomoko Liguori Gallery
- 93 Grand Street
- SoHo
Review by Charles Hagen
An omnious tone runs through much of the work in this group show, which
focuses on the relationship between personal identity and the body. In Bill
Jacobson's out-of-focus black-and-white images, a man's head becomes featureless
and generic; in Joe Ziolkowski's studio pictures, crisply lighted and sharply
focused nude males balance precariously on a tightrope or hang upside down.
The fleshly theme is continued in Cindy Sherman's dress-up picture of
herself as pregnant (with a plastic belly) and wearing white eye shadow
and wild hair; one of John Coplan's nude self-portraits, as a heroic if
hairy figure, is included as well. The dissolution of the body is suggested
by Ilyse Soutine's flatfooted color photograph of what looks like a homemade
electric chair, and by Jeff Wall's coolly dispassionate aerial view of a
cemetary.
And then there's the afterlife. Dozens of bodies stream down the wall
in David LaChapelle's apocalyptic installation, which consists of small
teardrop-shaped cutouts, each containing a figure apparantly asleep or with
eyes covered. Toned shades of red and orange, the work suggests an image
by William Blake of souls falling to perdition.
Other pictures here, by Sandy Skoglund, Jack Pierson and others, are
tied to the show's theme only tangentially, if at all. There is nodenying
the currency of the body as a subject in art today, and individual works
here succeed. But as a whole the show seems familiar, offering a melodramatic
take on an overworked topic.
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