[Mark Napier / Venus 2.0 No. 003233 / 2009]

Every now and then you encounter a project that is very strong formally and somewhat unsettling. The [DAM]Berlin gallery just launched an exhibition entitled "Venus 2.0" showcasing a recent body of work by the American artist Mark Napier that explores sex symbol and celebrity Pamela Anderson as an aesthetic object. Napier has devised a system for generating piecemeal assemblies of Anderson from "parts found online" yielding warped reconstructions of her idealized body. In the announcement for the show, Napier states that Anderson's (alleged) proclivity for cosmetic surgery is a secondary concern: "Ultimately, media shapes our existence much more than surgery. This work is not about the specifics of plastic surgery, but the larger impact of media on our perception of and representation of our own bodies." So, these grotesque figures appear to be more about the cultural resonance of the vast number of images of Anderson online (A Google image search returns 2,660,000 results) than indexing alterations to her body.

[Mark Napier / PAM Standing (stills) / 2009]

The best way to get a sense of "Venus 2.0" is to see the video excerpt from PAM Standing that Napier has posted on his website. In this short animation a photomontage of Anderson writhes about like a demented marionette while her various body parts cycle through an inventory of stock images—it is far from provocative. The underlying (and at times exposed) crude wireframe model and control points animating this 3D figure highlight the artificial nature of the "reconstructed" muse. The rotating figure occupies the centre of a blurred cloud of past permutations that could just as easily be referencing the visual effects of the Wachowski Brothers as the legacy of Cubism—or perhaps riffing on image manipulation in the media? Regardless of the exact intent, you won't forget this PAM anytime soon. Perhaps the best description of "Venus 2.0" could be gleaned by updating a quip by Walter Benjamin - the multitude of online images as parody of the motley cadaver.

If you'd like to take a closer look at Napier's exquisite corpse be sure to check out the selected prints and process work documenting this undertaking. See also some of his older projects which reconsider the stability of the the edifice/the city and the web. [via Mitchell Whitelaw]

An afterthought - the only other abstraction of the human figure that has made such an impression on me in the last several years is Brody Condon's 650 Polygon John Carmack (2004). Perhaps the lo-fi resolution of that sculpture is the appropriate steadfast, "masculine" counterpoint to PAM's discombobulated shuffle.