Tanya Marcuse: Torso

January 22, 1998 - February 28, 1998

Yoshii Gallery is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition, “Torso”, by artist Tanya Marcuse.  The exhibition will feature her newest work, polaroid emulsion transfers on glass and mylar.

Under Marcuse’s manipulation the thin membrane of the photographic emulsion becomes skin or clothing with folds and creases that evokes the drapery on ancient Greek sculpture and the shape of the female body.  The emulsion is then mounted on glass and mylar.  The image which has become a fragmented torso now floats and shimmers on the transparent support while shadows are cast on the wall behind.

Marcuse’s work has always played with ideas of stillness, presence and life.  In her previous work, platinum prints of isolated eyes from broken Greek sculptures stare directly at the viewer.  A wedding dress in its transparent container brings forth the idea of the bride, while pictures of the body of the bride contain the stillness and the sense of calm that only exist outside the corporeal.

In her current exhibition, Marcuse has found a new medium, which allows her to circle ever more closely around her central themes.  These emphemeral pieces quietly suggest form, passion and sex.  And it is the quietness and subtlety that create the unique presence of the images.  The work brings to mind the spaces between one moment and the next; the spaces where we always live even though we are rarely aware that we are there.