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C96
Article
R
Block (1999)
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| Karl
Grimes: Acute abscess boy, 1999, chromogenic print, 183
x 122 cm; courtesy
Nikolai Fine Art, New York |
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Karl
Grimes: Fracture appliance, 1999, chromogenic print,
122 x 183 cm; courtesy Nikolai Fine Art, New York |
When is an X-Ray a portrait? When is a specimen an artwork? From
grainy portraits to hypersaturated colours, Karl Grimes's work has
consistently sought to explore new perspectives on medical and scientific
matters. Both Still Life (1997) and Stuffed Histories
(1998), in distinctive ways, dealt with issues of identification
and classification in medical- and science-history display. Central
to all his work is the role of technology, specifically photography,
as a means to mediate our worlds, whether those of science, nature
or tourism. His perspective invites us to explore the function of
photography in reasserting old myths and in establishing new ones.
In his emphasis on the camera as a scientific tool for documenting
human and other natures, he foregrounds the critical role of lens-based
imaging for re-imagining all natures - for apprehending/comprehending
pathology, criminal proclivities and forensic evidence.
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| left
to right: Karl Grimes: Highmore cyst; Supernumerary
R; Impaction #3; Radiogram spot #1; Radiogram
spot #5; Radiogram spot #2;
all images 1999, chromogenic prints, 122 x 183 cm; courtesy
Nikolai Fine Art, New York |
In these sombre portraits in abandoned research files from R Block
in upstate New York, the figures and faces of these dark celebrities
point to the power of the look to scrutinise and penetrate, making
them both subject and object in the process of classification. The
attire, grooming and appearance - an ornamental pin decorates one
of the sitter's ties - the gestures and the pose - all suggest a
significant occasion. All highlight the codes of the formal portrait,
here performed for a medical lens as 'best practice' models of disease.
Used for research purposes and later abandoned, Grimes reworks their
images in a different age and context and engages us in narratives
of science history. In this revision, he unsettles the safety of
the representational regime and challenges the norms and neutrality
of the medical and forensic gaze.
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| left
to right: Karl Grimes: Melancholic boy; Gunshot; Multiple
stabs; Intersexual #7; all images 1999, chromogenic prints,
183 x 122 cm;courtesy
Nikolai Fine Art, New York |
Medical
display is designed on scientific principles as a pragmatic map
(atlas) and aid for health-care professionals. In reality, however,
it too depends upon a rhetoric that can be read as producing not
only information about disease, but also about its own institutional
and epistemic pathology. The sciences, more than any other human
institution, seek to be presented as ordered, rational, and developing
in a dynamic and appropriate way, yet the rhetoric of medical imaging
produces narratives of success and maps of conquest, which reinsert
science into the imaginary universe of the soap opera and imperial
saga.
Peter Wollen in Lynn Cooke and Peter Wollen (eds.), Visual Display:
Culture beyond Appearances, Dia Center for the Arts, 1995
Future
Nature (2001)
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| left
to right: Karl Grimes: Future nature
#4; Future nature #1 (detail); all images 2001, chromogenic
prints, 122 x 183 cm; courtesy the artist |
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Karl Grimes: Future nature #4; Future nature #32,
2001, chromogenic print, 122 x 183 cm; courtesy the artist |
From the glass menageries housed in the Hubrecht Laboratory, Utrecht
in the Netherlands, and the Tornblad Institute, Lund in Sweden,
come memories of the processes and politics of collection and colonisation.
Grimes transforms these embryonic figures through the techniques
and codes of glamour photography, amassing a strange, hyperreal
candy-coloured menagerie. This carnival of animals works in a Janus-like
manner, looking backwards to their past buried in research collections,
here reinvigorated and suggesting how in the future Nature's specimens
may be mediated as a virtual Disneyworld - an imaginary zoo, a sublime
simulacrum.
Grimes amalgamates diverse fields and processes from fashion photography,
portraiture, anthropology and historical material. His sustained
engagement with the imagery and technologies of medicine and science
forces a reassessment of the current art and science boundaries
and challenges the so-called objectivity of the scientific and museum
discourse, suggesting new kinds of public display, spectacle and
potential understanding.
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| left
to right:: Karl Grimes: Future
nature #28; Future nature #7; Future nature #25;
all images 2001, chromogenic prints, 122 x 183 cm; courtesy
the artist |
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| left
to right:: Karl Grimes: Future
nature #3; Future nature #20; Future nature #12;Future
nature #30; all images 2001, chromogenic
prints, 122 x 183 cm; courtesy the artist |
Images: Karl Grimes
Text:
Stephanie McBride
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