Carissa Rodriguez: It’s Symptomatic / What Would Edith Say, 2014
permanent ink marker on inkjet print mounted on aluminum, wood brace
60 x 40 in (152.4 x 101.6cm)
These images of tongues onto which are scribbled health diagnosis, seem more and more relevant, as you look at them. Somehow, they lost the feel of directness achieved by the sharply focused style and instead they convey a certain fascination for the human body via the virtual space.
Starting at the top, the artist’s tongue – muscle of conceptual articulation and arbiter of aesthetic disposition – is more simply, the locus of language and taste; while accordingly at the bottom, the filth of distinction gathers in the anus. Pornography sanitizes anuses by cosmetically bleaching them for the screen, rendering natural flesh “more uniform with its surrounding area”, similar to the way art galleries light and fluff
their spaces to achieve the cold, fluorescent-white installation shot that emits an ambience akin to the sweatshop– an artwork at its maximum efficiency. Between tongue and anus are the organs, situated midway, or Midtown, much like the art advisor’s position between the artist and the collector. Practitioners of Chinese medicine diagnose the conditions of internal organs as its symptoms appear on the tongue’s surface, which is read and appraised like a rare map, rug, vase or painting, and although it is too overwrought to liken the tongue to a screen (mirroring the artist inside) or to a ‘mood board’ in the case of the branding consultant, the liver and spleen are nevertheless dutifully at work scripting messages to the moist upper surface.
Via: Art Asylum
