The human body is one of the oldest and most beloved tropes in the history of art. The antibody, however, is a bit more contemporary. We're basically salivating over Lisa Cooley's current exhibition "Antibody," featuring a selection of artwork that explodes, reworks, erases, multiplies and commodifies our fleshy forms.
The gallery explains how the exhibition offers up "the body in flux, extended, mediated, free of boundaries and full of possibilities. In these unique polaroids, offal weaves around electrical apparatus, alluring yet fragmented, presaging the way that our bodies and minds are enmeshed in Fitbits and iPhones." While the "Body Art" movement envisioned the body as a primal and visceral bound entity, this show sees technological capabilities as extensions of ourselves, adapting and spawning until any semblance of a centered self is no more.
Anthea Hamilton and Julie Verhoeven's "Fruity Seating" riffs off ancient Roman imagery of the female nude and a bountiful banquet. The plushy forms of the soft sculptures contradict their rectilinear shape, just as the jarringly flat nude bodies play off the models' curves. The thrust of the work rests somewhere between a Marshall McLuhan collage and a hippie-dippy flashback. In stark contrast to the blissed out beauty of these idyllic bodies are Helen Chadwick's meat-centric photographs, in which the body is presented as a buffet of raw parts beginning to leak. Finally Ed Atkins' "Tumor" depicts the malignant and mysterious capabilities inside ourselves, and their bizarre ability to propel change without logic or reason.
Scroll down to see images from the exhibition and watch as the body transforms from an object of desire to disgust to total mystery and back again.
Anthea Hamilton and Julie Verhoeven. Fruity Seating. 2012. Courtesy of the artists and Lisa Cooley, New York
Anthea Hamilton and Julie Verhoeven. Fruity Seating. 2012. Courtesy of the artists and Lisa Cooley, New York
Anthea Hamilton and Julie Verhoeven. Fruity Seating. 2012. Courtesy of the artists and Lisa Cooley, New York
Anthea Hamilton and Julie Verhoeven. Fruity Seating. 2012. Courtesy of the artists and Lisa Cooley, New York
Anthea Hamilton and Julie Verhoeven. Fruity Seating. 2012. Courtesy of the artists and Lisa Cooley, New York
Helen Chadwick. Meat Abstract No. 3: Liver. 1989. Courtesy of Richard Saltoun and Lisa Cooley, New York
Helen Chadwick. Meat Abstract No. 8: Gold Ball / Steak. 1989. Courtesy of Richard Saltoun and Lisa Cooley, New York
Eva Kotátková. Fragmented Body 1. 2013. Courtesy of the artist; Meyer Riegger, Berlin; Lisa Cooley, New York
Ed Atkins. A Tumor (In English) (still). 2011. Courtesy of the artist; Cabinet Gallery, London; Lisa Cooley, New York
"Antibody" features work from Ed Atkins, Matthew Brannon, Carter, Antoine Catala, Helen Chadwick, Alice Channer, Anne Collier, Anthea Hamilton and Julie Verhoeven, Eva Kotátková and Jochen Lempert. It is showing at Lisa Cooley Gallery until July 26. Let us know if you prefer your body reconfigured or served whole in the comments.