Title

ID

Authors

Shannon Egan, Gettysburg College

Files

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Document Type

Art Catalog

Description

The five sculptors in ID challenge the conventions of representational self-portraiture. In their selective and often abstract use of figuration, these artists engage the identification of self as it is situated socially and institutionally—one’s “I.D.”—as well as the psychoanalytic dimensions of the “id.”

The exhibition’s title introduces a kind of paradoxical conflict between public identification, found in various bureaucratic forms of I.D. (passports, drivers’ licenses, and Social Security numbers, for example), and the id, a Freudian classification for the most basic and unconscious physical drives (sex, food, aggression).

All of these artists respond to the seeming incongruities of I.D. and id by exhibiting subtle awareness of the complicated construction of identity. Abandoning the tradition of simply mirroring one’s outward appearance, they not only reconsider what it means to represent oneself as an art object, but also question the literal and figurative boundaries of the human form in sculpture. [excerpt]

Publication Date

Fall 2008

Publisher

Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College

City

Gettysburg

Keywords

self-portraiture, public identification, id, identity, Anthony Cervino, Jason Ferguson, Ronald Gonzalez, Melissa Ichiuji, Rob Neilson

Comments

ID was on exhibition at Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College, August 29 - September 20, 2008.

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