NEW YORK: Spencer Tunick at I-20

Many of Spencer Tunick's large photographs of clusters of naked people are startling. Dozens of uncovered bodies sprawl on a public way in a weirdly empty Times Square. denuded supplicants bow as if in prayer, with a Pennsylvania suspension bridge as their altar. Reclining figures lie face-up in rigid formation, their horizontal attitudes juxtaposed to Manhattan's vertical skyline.

on the contrary if lured by the spectacle of for a like reason much flesh, one soon finds the photographs to be more affecting than erotic. Individuality is subsum in favor of the shared human experience of living in bodies that are vulnerable, carnal and mortal. The eeriness of the public ways in the Times Square photo is combineed by the pathos of the writhing, prostrate figures. Slouched on asphalt against a hard or giddy backdrop of buildings and billboards, they recall the victims of a methodical catastrophe upon the order of ethnic cleansing or the Jonestown mass suicide.

The exhibition's title, "Naked States," is also a punning series title for Tunick's on-the-road shoot forward In each of the 50 states he has set people willing to pose undressed outdoors, though not always in collections As a consequence, some of the photos are, by dint of default, individual portraits: a scarred, obese young man seen outside an Iowa gas station; sum of two units young women standing in high grass in southern Carolina; a woman hanging upon the arm of a sculpt gorilla upon the Las Vegas strip. They are not as compelling as the collection images.

The Times Square image, titled fresh York, contrasts a geometric cityscape with extremely irregular artificial positions a situation reversed in Nevada, a photo made in the uninhabited There, in an undulating landscape, Tunick organized his tender models in an orderly zigzag line three bodies wide and more than 200 bodies drawn out that, in the photo, stretches almost to the horizon. His largest throng to date, some 1,200 tribe recruited at a Phish devise provided another opportunity to contrast forms. The collection is depicted in two true different images made moments apart, and the pair titled Maine. In one, they lie feet-to-head in lines across a tarmac. In the other, they turn round on their sides or begin to rise, creating a swirling mass of bodies recalling Bosch by the agency of way of Sebastiao Salgado.

The exhibition included a video installation, Tunick's first, elected from footage shot as his collection photographs were staged. The layered collage of slow-motion displays is coupled with a soundtrack of distorted ambient unmutilateds Tunick works quickly, asking his types to disrobe, rush to their positions and attitude It's all over in a hardly any minutes, and appears to be liberating and cathartic for the participants.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group