Orlan
Digital Photographs and Sculptures
Refiguration / Self-Hybridization: The Pre-Columbian and African Series

Opening reception: Thursday, September 8, 2005
September 8-October 15, 2005

Stux Gallery presents Orlan: Digital Photographs and Sculptures, Refiguration / Self-Hybridization: The Pre-Columbian and African Series, on view through October 15.  This will be Orlan’s first solo exhibition in New York in ten years and the artist’s first exhibition with Stux Gallery.

The exhibition will consist of self-portrait photographs from Orlan’s Self-Hybridization: Pre-Columbian series, works that focus on the merging of histories, past and present, cultural identity and ideal forms of beauty. Orlan will, as she has in the past, rely on the advances of technology to assist her in combining her own constructed image with those of Pre-Columbian icons representing the standards of ideal beauty from non-Western cultures.   Also on display will be two life size resin sculptures from the artist’s African Self-Hybridization series.

In these photographs and sculptures, Orlan continues to question the social and cultural pressures exerted    on the body and its representation in the media. Orlan has created in these works a new image, literally combining Pre-Columbian and African icons with her own image; the resulting hybridizations create a complex narrative that confuses distinctions between time and place, real and unreal. She has given herself a new image in order to produce new images: the Self-Hybridizations. The works contain evidence of past tribal rites and rituals associated with beautification that, in conjunction with Orlan’s own modifications via cosmetic plastic surgery, comment on prominent issues in recent history such as collective identity, tragedy, and exclusivity.  The Self-Hybridations also act as portraits of a potential future humanity, in which the interbreeding between human beings from various origins give birth to new bodies, with nomadic and mutant identities.

Orlan’s treatment of her own image is enhanced by the introduction of issues of “self” and “other,” adding to the layering of the artwork. The overwhelming collection of “faces” in combination with Orlan’s already hybridized face, offers insight into the complexities of an artist who is attempting to create a new “self.”  Orlan’s work, which has occupied the forms of installation, photography, video, performance and sculpture, references the artist’s surgical performances, from 1990 to 1993, where she used plastic surgery to create artworks that established new identities.

Orlan has been featured in exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum (Los Angeles, USA), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, USA), Mildred Kemper Art Museum (St Louis, USA), Palazzo Strozzi, (Florence, Italy), Palazzo of Exhibitions, Rome, Italy. Center George Pompidou (Paris, France), Center National for Photography (Paris, France), Palais of Tokyo (Paris, France), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris, France) Kunsthalle in Vienna, the Reckermann Gallery in Munich, MAK, (Vienna, Austria), Kunsthalle of Kiele, Casino Luxembourg, Miro Foundatio (Barcelone, Spain),  Museum of Contemporary Art (Victoria, Spain), Museum of Photography (Salamanca, Spain) Musée de l’Élysée (Lausanne, Switzerland), Moscow House of Photography (Moscow, Russia), Center Hall of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea), Art Museum of Lima (Lima, Peru).