Yearly Archives: 2012

Interiors

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“Aziz + Cucher’s Interiors are metaphors for the abandon and the terror of the collapse of distinctions between human and non-human, the attraction and the repulsion of the dissolution of limits.”

–Frazer Ward, PARKETT #60

Plasmorphia

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“With their artificial skin coloration these parts are tantalizingly suggestive of interchangeable, anonymous, polymorphic, amputated body parts, tensed muscles, prosthetic devices, and feral sex toys,”

–Dominique Nahas, REVIEW, October 1, 1997

Dystopia

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“An inventory of a bizarre skin growth, Dystopia, seems to document a pathology. It seems clear that at some level this pathology is not only dermatological, but cultural, commenting, perhaps, on the gradual but waxing loss of identity and the means of communication in a technological environment that promotes anonymity and conformity.”

–Adrian W.B. Randolph, FRAUEN KUNST WISSENSCHAFT, #30

Renaissance Portraits

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“Renaissance Portraits” is a portfolio of blurred photographs made by re-photographing reproductions of 15th- and 16th-century paintings. The images act as a metaphor for the passage of time, suggesting a vision of the Renaissance obscured by the fog of history. It’s a view of the period that could not have existed at the time, prior to the invention of photography and the focusing lens.

The dreamlike images, at once familiar and strange, investigate the nature of perception as the eye continually tries to resolve them, but is unable to do so. How one compares oneself to the subject is paramount to the experience of looking at portraits: “I wish I were that rich, that beautiful” always crosses one’s mind. By erasing features, dissolving personal affect, and eliminating period dress, the artist hopes to create portraits that transcend individual personality and create archetypes for the human condition, allowing the viewer to experience the Renaissance portrait in a new way.

These photographs are also an attempt to revisit the light and color of the Renaissance—creating rhapsodies of color that are meditative pieces, glimpses into a world beyond our focus, beyond our ken.

Renaissance

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The source materials for the photographs in this series are re-worked master drawings, largely from the Renaissance. The artist’s many layered process of reproduction and blurring, appropriating an image and subjecting it to a series of manipulations (photocopying, cutting, painting, re-photographing) transforms the original images, giving them a new meaning in a new context — a renaissance of the Renaissance, if you will.

The original drawings were attempts to capture the human figure in a specific action, either from Biblical, mythological, or historical scenes, but the rough sketches were removed from the milieu of the larger whole. Armstrong’s process accentuates that extraction, removing them further from their context and adding a new psychology of color to the achromatic drawings.