JEANNE DUNNING
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Dunning’s strategy often hinges on making her subject look like something it’s not. In this show, tomatoes look like tongues, hearts, or testicles; body parts resemble canyon walls. By humanizing the tomatoes and dehumanizing the body, Dunning puts vegetables and humans on the same plane. Significantly, the tomatoes are of the canned variety. Is she implying that human beings are equally homogenized? In three almost identical tomato pictures–Detail 8, Detail 9, and Detail 10–Dunning brings the camera in tight to produce in-your-face close-ups. Brilliant ruby “flesh” shot through with faint veins glistens, filling each picture space. Black oval frames make the red even more intense. Dunning’s choice of an oval rather than a more traditional rectangular frame seems intended to recall both portrait photography and mirrors: she cleverly uses form to critique photography’s historical characterization as a “mirror of the soul” or “window on the world.” For though these photos seem straightforward, they’re more paradoxical than revealing. Their overpowering visceral quality makes us uncomfortable–more than a little squeamish. We could be confronting our own organs as they loom, horrifically large and isolated, in their portrait/mirror frames. On the other hand, that soft fleshy tissue is so lusciously red, the color of lipstick and lingerie. The seductive gloss of the photo surface is augmented by a salivalike coating of laminate. These moist, scarlet mounds are like gigantic tongues ready to French-kiss the viewer from head to foot. Even the three black oval frames begin to look like several letter O’s strung together to suggest an orgasmic “OOOOO.”
In other photos Dunning explores the transformative potential of the body by creating a metaphysical or surreal mood. This usually involves one or two body parts surrounded by a deep, rich black background. By holding the flash or other light source too close to the subject, the artist often burns out detail; usually only the contours of the body parts are detailed enough to convey basic form, skin tone, and the presence or absence of hair. Most impressive is Knee Elbow, in which the title body parts seem luminous Stonehenge monoliths, conjuring up images of ancient Druidic rites involving human sacrifice.
