“Body-ody-oddy”
Fall 2018
This is an image of the Body-ody-oddy exhibition held in the Clough Hanson Gallery. The exhibition consisted of artists exploring the body at, against, and beyond its boundaries, creating hybrids, amalgams, and excesses that illuminate the ways that politics and pleasures are made flesh. It featured work by Katie Torn, Alex Paulus, Melissa Wilkinson, and Moth Moth Moth and the Haus of Phantosea. Alex Paulus commented on his work, stating "My paintings are a representation of how ridiculous I think life can be...I also like to include humor in the work. If my art can make people laugh and feel good, I’ve succeeded. The paintings are usually very bright and bold in color, and the subject matter can be a little bizarre. The use of brightly colored paint seems to curb some the strange imagery and make it more palatable to the viewer." Melissa Wilkinson commented as well, saying "These series of paintings focus on my interest in dichotomies: obscuring and revealing, attraction and repulsion, good and evil, the past and the present. I appropriate imagery from a variety of sources in order to develop a pastiche that fractures the conventional male gaze and positions art historical models as both subject and spectacle. I choose to dismantle epic narratives from the past to create a schizophrenic perspective. The images break from their original sources into fragments, creating a complex visual experience that both irritates and seduces. It is through this body of work that I seek to challenge the hetero-normative male gaze and reinvent a fluid view that fluctuates between unconventional representations of the erotic body."