Bellevue Art Museum
Bellevue, WA
425-519-0770
http://www.bellevueart.org/
The Self, Absorbed
September 4 November 7, 1999
Bellevue Art Museum presents a selection of self-portraits by regional,
national, and international artists coming to terms with the implications
that
new ways of picturing ourselves - cloning, medical imaging, and cosmetic
surgery - hold for one of the oldest art forms. The exhibition will address
the longevity of the self-portrait as an artistic genre, question the stereotype
of the self-absorbed artist, and trace the effects that broad cultural changes
have on the ways individuals understand the borders between the self and
the world. (above left: Denise Marika, Face Me Photo Series,
1996, inkjet print on sanding belt, felt, steel, 19 inches high, 15 inches
diameter; right above: Denise Marika, Face Me (blue), 1996, sanding
belt, video, felt, steel, 66 x 32 x 45 inches)
J.
D. Beltran (Bay Area, California) refers to the history of art - and to
her identity as an artist - in her work. In her Mastercopies Portrait
Series, copies of old master paintings are installed alongside video
imagery of the artist dressed and made up like the subjects of the paintings.
The collision between the two media - painting and video - in this installation
shows that the use of physical characteristics to suggest psychological
states, though prone to infinite variation, has been a constant in self-portraiture.
(left: J. D. Beltran, Mastercopies Portrait Series, Self-Portrait
(After Vermeer), 1998, oil on portrait linen, 16 x 20 inches)
Natalie Bookchin says of her Databank work: "The
Databank of the Everyday takes as its subject the real everyday uses of
computers in our culture: storage, transmission, 
dissemination, and filtration of bodies of information.
The work reflects on what various media - from photography to computers
- have always attempted to do, to represent the Truth of life and to organize
it into well-defined lists and categories. Featuring the latest in amplified
fin de siècle rhetoric, the work vehemently perpetuates the current
hysteria surrounding new technologies. The Databank champions the loop as
a new form of representation. There is no true beginning or end, only a
series of loops with their endless repetitions, halted only by a user's
selection or a power shortage. And so, in keeping with the tradition of
technology, and in compliance with early twentieth-century avant-garde movements,
The Databank heralds its very own twenty-first century manifesto."
(left: Natalie Bookchin, Databank of the Everyday, 1996, Still
from CD-ROM)
Read more about the Bellevue
Art Museum in Resource Library Magazine.
Search for more articles
and essays on American art in Resource Library. See America's Distinguished Artists
for biographical information on historic artists.
This page was originally published in 1999 in Resource
Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for
more information.
Copyright 2012 Traditional
Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit
corporation. All rights reserved.
Bellevue Art Museum presents a selection of self-portraits by regional,
national, and international artists coming to terms with the implications
that
new ways of picturing ourselves - cloning, medical imaging, and cosmetic
surgery - hold for one of the oldest art forms. The exhibition will address
the longevity of the self-portrait as an artistic genre, question the stereotype
of the self-absorbed artist, and trace the effects that broad cultural changes
have on the ways individuals understand the borders between the self and
the world. (above left: Denise Marika, Face Me Photo Series,
1996, inkjet print on sanding belt, felt, steel, 19 inches high, 15 inches
diameter; right above: Denise Marika, Face Me (blue), 1996, sanding
belt, video, felt, steel, 66 x 32 x 45 inches)
