The human body is one of the most articulate and simultaneously confounding subjects that artists depict. Yet the schools of thought that guide figurative painting siphon artists into narrowly focused camps with controlled and codified vocabularies.
Body Politic—the upcoming exhibition at the National Arts Club featuring more than twenty established and emerging artists—aims to upset this status quo by amplifying the cacophonic surge of artists' voices speaking through the body. Unexpected interpretations of the figure breathe new life into an historic subject, with unexpected and surprising outcomes.
In Body Politic, artists explore the figure as an object adorned, left hauntingly bare, celebrated in its physicality and peculiarities, objectified in its psychology; in many instances, serving to challenge mores surrounding carnality, beauty, and power. It is a landscape on which the human journey is written, a battleground where vestiges of change and violence can be seen, a burgeoning vessel that holds literal as well as metaphorical potential within its bounds.
The human body's meaning is enhanced by so many nuanced visualizations, at once inciting discomfiture, intimacy, and empathy. Artist and viewer become co-conspirators in Body Politic. The thrill of the flesh and shared desire to understand and acknowledge all that the body is capable of demands a new, unforeseen and invigorated, "body" politic.
Artists include Shawn Barber, Larissa Bates, Sarah Bereza, Saskia Ozol Eubanks, Christian Fagerlund, Renee Foulks, Robyn Frank, Jane Hamill, Alex Kanevsky, Steve Ketchum, Oh Joon B. Kwon, Jerome Lagarrigue, Allison Maletz, Nat Meade, Jenny Morgan, Jeff Muhs, Ethan Murrow, Reuben Negron, Scott Noel, Tim Okamura, Holly Ann Sailors, and Melanie Vote.
The National Arts Club is located at 15 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY. For more info on the show contact bodypoliticnac@gmail.com.
Body Politic
March 7-17, with an opening reception
Thursday, March 7, 6-8pm
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South New York, NY 10003