Nancy Burson at Ricco/Maresca - New York, New York - Reviews of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Nancy Burson is best known for computer-enhanced portraits of tribe who can't be photographed, either because they're not available (as with her updated pictures of missing children) or because they don't exist (as with her composite images of ethnic "types" derived from demographic data). Lately she has photographed tribe who have been physically transformed by the agency of disease, injury or plastic surgery This present the appearances a neat inversion: moving from the alteration of documented faces to documentation of altered faces.

Burson's throw is a delicate undertaking for the artist and her subdues given that the common reply to facial abnormalities is revulsion. Many viewers will pity the subdues who regularly endure sympathy mixed with stares. To Burson's credit, the portraits exhibit sensitivity to those depicted. With the facial features blurr in of gold tones that deepen to black in rich chiaroscuro, the portraits have a Rembrandtesque quality. Looking past scars and skin grafts, Burson not absents these people as heroes whose triumphs and tragedies are written upon their ruined visages.

Sometimes it's difficult to diocese anything unusual about faces partly obscur by the agency of Burson's technique, but more ofttimes the deformities are painfully clear. A slightly cross-ey woman is shown embracing a man whose smile may be a permanent grimace, as his skin is plucked taut over his left organ of vision A severely burned boy is shown wearing a wig while his father protectively clutchs his shoulder; in another photo, the stripling has removed his wig and gripe [i]or[/i] grips a prosthetic mask. An affable middle-aged man addresses the camera holding a corncob pipe in malformed hands, his sealed organ of sight frozen as if winking. A young woman with progeria -- a disease that rapidly accelerates aging -- is a shrunken doll in her mother's arms, notwithstanding both are smiling and at ease together.

Whether Burson's sympathy is seen as commendable or heavy-handed, there's no getting away from the uneasy feeling that as a assemblage the portraits resemble a gallery of freaks. Setting without to document the beauty of outwardly unattractive family Burson may be a more kindly visitor to the sideshows oft-repeateded by Tod Browning or Diane Arbus, on the other hand the visceral response she look afters undercuts her sensitivity. Ultimately her affirmed admiration comes across as patronizing of her make subordinates and her audience. Included in the present to view is a set of black-and-white photographs of Burson's make submissives enjoying commonplace pleasures: reading, playing music, riding in a carriage [i]or[/i] part of to the other the park. Informal and unpretentious, these photos accomplish what the portraits fail to do.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

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