MOPA - Balboa Park

Exhibit: FLESH
Artist: Gary Schneider
This exhibit contained mostly black and white photos - Geletin Silver Prints. I found the genetic self portrait portion the most interesting. I am not sure how the images were captured. I am pretty sure, based on my last visit to the dentist's office (to get xrays), that the images were captured digitally with medical photographic eqiuipment. When you read to the words that explain what the subject of the photo is, it has a real scientific quality. The exhibit seemed to me to be a fusion of medical photographic, microscopic, and xray technology with visual art. Taking something seen with the naked eye everyday and zooming in so closely that those same body parts take an almost abstract appearence. The photos of the body parts take on shapes commonly used in abstract 2D art. The body parts become just barely on recognizeable and fill the frame with bizarre and wonderful biomorphic shapes.
There was a series of images taken up close of just several different individuals' eyes mouths and ears. In this series piece the differences between the people are very obvious, then when you walk further into the exhibit there are microscopic pictures of an eye, ear drum, and hair, etc. At this perspective you can't really determine a difference in ethnicity, social status, economic status, or religious beleifs, one could even inffer that from this perspective you can see that there really are no differences among us as people, as creatures, animals. It was also interesting how each xray could tell a story about the kind of life the subject had lead. I'm sure that if I were a doctor I would read much more, but the images did imply this person lived hard or this person lived very conservatively, under glass, I found the images of the eardrum the most beautiful. The light danced across it. And a variety of highlights and shadows collected on this one tiny form bringing out and apperence of luster and glowing. I found it aesthetically pretty, I think it might be neat to see them hung somewhere liek a doctors office. It might bring some calm and appretiation to all the people in the waiting rooms, sitting there being afraid of what they don't understand about their own bodies. It might also help people appreciate the beauty of their bodies and encourage them to take care of themselves and to not be afraid of what they don't always completly understand.