Seth Price

Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad

Jun 3–Sep 3, 2018

MoMA PS1

Installation view of Seth Price:  Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad, on view at MoMA PS1 through September 3, 2018. Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo by Matthew Septimus.

This recent series of large-scale photographs by Seth Price (American, b. 1973) depicts magnified details of human skin in high resolution, bearing only the first names of the people who served as the artist’s models. Presented as a discrete installation, these abstract portraits of people of various ages, genders, and races document portions of each subject’s body in extreme detail. Using a robotic camera typically deployed for scientific research or forensic study, Price captured thousands of high-definition images in a single sitting, focusing on a specific area such as the arm or leg. The resulting images were subsequently stitched together using satellite-imaging software, run through a 3D graphics program, and adjusted by a fashion retoucher. Printed on fabric and stretched over commercial light boxes, these digital skins take on an inner light, fusing human warmth with a screen-like glow.

Since the mid-2000s, Price’s work has been celebrated for its reflection of the cultural, political, and economic conditions of this new century through the use of disparate image formats, fashion, music, commercial packaging, and advertising applications. Less noted is the connection that much of his art has to the body. Whether invoking it through violent media images, sexual cartoons, casts, clothing, or sewage pipes, Price returns repeatedly to the body as the site where technology’s effects register most acutely, if mysteriously. Combining the crisp detail of close observation with the impersonal breadth afforded by panoramic view, the photographs presented here provide uncannily intimate representations that nevertheless reveal very little about their models.

Seth Price: Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad is organized by Peter Eleey, Chief Curator, with Josephine Graf, Curatorial Assistant, MoMA PS1.

The exhibition is made possible by the MoMA PS1 Annual Exhibition Fund.

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].