fotoplay at princeton

This past weekend I visited the Lucas Gallery in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. There, on the second floor, I found an exhibition of life-size photo-based self-portraits created by students in artist Nathan Carter’s drawing class.

It’s always exciting to stumble upon work that really stops you in your tracks, but what a bonus to stumble upon work that relates precisely to what you’re obsessed with, at any given moment. It’s a real-life magical thing.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a similar project I did with my students at the ArtLab in the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, a continuation of years of exploring Fotoplay ideas:

The idea of “designing one’s Self,” and re-designing one’s Self is of course, as we see in the works below from the Princeton University students, an idea that can be explored with the photographic prompt of a self-portrait, over and over again throughout one’s life.

And working at life-size scale, or just a bit bigger, makes for some really compelling imagery…

Conceptually, the Princeton students approached the challenge in many ways, with many materials…

Here’s a delicate, poised rendering in pencil

and a clever diptych-like piece in pencil and paint, with a muted palette and a sexy, tailored suit on the right, and a bright, playful clown’s outfit on the left; it so effectively illustrates the nature of duality, not to mention the particular challenges of a university student exploring her identity and her path…

This student approached the project as an illustrator and a storyteller, transforming herself into a Sherlock Holmes detective… and she’s looking for clues to…?

While this art student created a work that is strong both conceptually and stylistically, by playing with the composition of the piece (is she entering, exiting, is she here or would she rather be out there…) and by designing for herself an iconic one-of-a-kind outfit which only she could wear so well. And that negative space on the left…

Then there’s the idea of an (art) student as performer or mime… I love how her pose allows her to play with the frame of the paper as a container…

There was also one student who chose to create of herself a mummy… to wrap herself completely (with masking tape), and to cut the whole form from the paper, which gave it volume, and turned it into a weighty object.

This was brilliant, bold, and haunting.