Storyboard #4_5, 2003, Piezo Pigment print

LOCURTO/OUTCALT

Taking cartography further are the pioneering works of Lilla LoCurto and William Outcault. Like phrenology, yet unlike medical diagnostic imaging devices, these images are derived only from the surface of the artists’ bodies, despite their resemblance to the “cuts” of internal scanning technologies. Their image-making process involves total body scans from military application modified by programs developed in conjunction with a computer scientist and two mathematicians to map the volumetric body in 2-D, the same goal of simultaneity sought by the Cubist artists. The work on display here, Storyboard #4_5 (2003) is a still taken from a video that depicts the same imaging technology. The angle of the “slice” is programmed to change, resulting in an astounding violent and poetic calligraphic image, just recognizable as the sectioned and unraveled bodies of the artists.

- Kóan-Jeff Baysa

LoCurto/Outcalt have been exhibiting their collaborative work since 1979. Selected venues include the Brooklyn Museum of Art in NY, the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge , the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena , Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota , the Carpenter Center at Harvard University in Boston , Skidmore College in Saratoga , and the Nexus Center for Contemporary Art in Atlanta . Their publications include Mapping in the Age of Digital Media, Corporal Politics, the Reality Effect: Contemporary American Photography, and A Vital Matrix. Reviews of their work have appeared in the New York Times, ArtForum, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Reader, the Boston Globe, and Art on Paper. They have been artists in residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus , Ohio and at the Maryland Institute College of Art; they have received grants from Art Matters and MIT Council for the Arts.  Both artists hold an MFA in Sculpture from the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale , Illinois and currently reside in Brooklyn , NY .