>>PREVIEW
SKINS
Runs until October 20
K-Squared Studio (Art Central)
"I look for unintended art," says Keith Kostuchowski (Kost) of K-Squared Studio. "This show was a year in the making and all the result of a happy accident."
Kost is a ceramicist by trade. His studio is home to an interesting collection of pieces that involve brilliant colour glazes with aquatic, sea-creature themes and designs. His latest show is not about ceramics, however, but a collection of black and white photos titled Skins. The show does, however, involve ceramics, but not in the way you might think.
"I have been doing photography for over 20 years, but I majored in ceramics. This whole photo-shoot for Skins came from an idea I had when I was cleaning my hands of all the clay I use for my ceramics," says Kost. "I was fascinated by the detail that was revealed by the clay after it had dried, almost like a true statue. Then as I moved my hand, the clay crackled and it looked like the statue was coming to life. It took me a full year to be able to figure out how to portray the images I wanted to get across."
What Kost came up with is inviting models to strip nude, be covered in wet porcelain mud and allowing it to dry and then photographing in detail how the textures and cracks of the dried clay became living sculpture. "Actually it was easy to talk people into it," says Kost. "I showed the models my photos of me covered in the porcelain clay and it was very funny, but I ended up having to shave my chest hair off for the full effect. The first part of the photo shoot is very stiff as the clay dries and contracts, and then I asked the models to move slightly or smile or pose in different ways that allowed the clay to crack in symmetrical ways."
The resultant images are striking. Using a digital camera and inspired lighting, angles, negative space and shadows, Skins is an amazing study in the human form, transformed into stone and then back into flesh. The clay is the skin of the living statues, sloughing off. It is as if Kost secretly photographed a museum of classical Hellenic statuary as they came to life in the middle of the night. Each of the photos captures a particular mood, or form in situ. The photograph entitled Shattered is a male figure in defeat, fragmented, a decaying statue. Eclipse is a nude female torso of light and shadow, in an effect that seems almost lunar, like the photographs of the moon taken from the Apollo spacecraft. Not all of the photos are recognizably human either. Mountain Back is a remarkably geologic form of a model’s back, head lowered out of frame with the clay dried into the slopes of a mountain.
"The process was fun but could also be very uncomfortable," laughs Kost. "As the clay dries, it tightens on the skin and it quickly gets very itchy." He’s pointing to one particularly suggestive photo of a person clawing the crackled and dry clay off her leg entitled Sura Scabo Febris – Latin for Cat Scratch Fever. |
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