Partial Disclosures   1997-2000

“Partial Disclosures” is a series of wall mounted photo installations that investigate the depiction of the human body: the visual languages that describe the surface and what we believe/imagine to lie below. Through the juxtaposition of the photographed (“real”) body and the projected diagrams of the internal structures (“conceptual”), an evocative dialog is engendered that is simultaneously sensual, disconcerting, and perhaps frightening.

The images were created between 1997 and 2000. They are comprised of single and multiple panel photographic pieces that range from 8×10” to approximately 8×12’ overall. The component panels are 8×10”, 11×14” and 20×24”. They are attached directly to the walls with black map pins that become virtually invisible. The images are primarily of over life-size figures of male, female, and indeterminate gender.

The photographs that make up “Partial Disclosures” were made in collaboration with dancers and performance artists, particularly Paulo Henrique. The procedure was purposefully low-tech: slides of 18th and 19th century anatomy charts were projected onto the body in the studio and the results being directly photographed without any further manipulation, either digital or conventional, as has been the case with all my earlier work. I was focusing here on the direct interaction of the live and the diagrammatic, working with the figure in motion as well as still, to create a final image that could not literally be seen in the studio. The deliberate theatricality of this set up combined with the emphatic flatness of the anatomy diagram resulted in an image that described an enigmatic space between the logical and the surreal, the painterly and the photographic.

Since the initial presentation of “Partial Disclosures” in 1997 at the University of North Carolina, the piece has been reconfigured for a variety of architectural spaces in the U.S. and Europe, ranging from traditional gallery spaces, alternative spaces, and a deconsecrated church. In each location, “Partial Disclosures” has been modified and reimagined to respond to radically different contexts.

Related Work   1998-2001

ALL IMAGES UNTITLED, 1998-2001 © ROBERT FLYNT