Emmy Mikelson
Wittgenstein’s well known quote, “the human body is the best picture of the human soul,” is a central tenet in the work. The work addresses the idea of the physical body as a succinct ‘picture’ of the subject. Corporeality is not a passive container. Through the language of mutation and animality, this ‘picture’ is explored as a fracturing and rhizomatic tableau. The physically fractured or mutated body points to an equally fractured knowledge. It is an instance where the unsoundness of form and of reason parallels one another. The genetic definition of the vast majority of mutations (‘loss-of-function’) is defined as destroying meaning. The presence of mutation is therefore the evidence of a breakdown in meaning.
The sculpture, Coyote, is an installation of mutated coyote forms. The foam mannequins are manipulated and re-cast several times to create conglomerate bodies, which exhibit replicated heads, limbs, torsos, etc. The animal shape is both art-historical and contemporary, and allows for an open dialogue between animality and anthropomorphisms. The gestures exhibited by the bodies create a strained and writhing orgiastic mass. The amorphous gold-leafed forms jutting from and impaling the bodies are symbiotic and antibiotic extensions of the body. In addition to adopting a baroque aesthetic, the texture and physicality of the work explores the physical body in a state of becoming. The animal’s body proper and the splintering amorphous masses are treated as instances of the same cohesive whole. One instance of body slips or spills into another and the varying degrees of detriment and rapture continually oscillate. The body is marked as a series of tenuous boundaries where the internal and external are enmeshed. The result is the extroversion of things where emphasis is placed on the visible.
Click here for Emmy Mikelson's Bio and Past Exhibits
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Coyote |
A Case for Mania |
Either/Or no. 1 |
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A Hare |
Untitled no.1 |
Euclidean Spine |