Armless

2005 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

158 x 104 cm

Chloe Piene

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The figure in Armless tapers away. Muscular legs turned upright spin down into a disintegrating torso. Lines, that in another drawing would sketch out contours and volume, here seem to be strands of flesh. They hang down from full feet and flutter into nothingness as the form becomes less and less present. The armlessness is named but the lack of a head, which one can possibly make out becoming strewn lines, suggests a top-to-bottom dissolution.

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Chloe Piene’s work often depicts the body and its skeleton. Her drawings spindle extremities into thin loops of line and her sculptures stack skulls on slabs of clay. The fragile twisting of the body is executed in luxuriously rich materials, which underscore the virtuosity of Piene’s hand and vision. Skeletons on vellum make physical mortality transcendently transparent, and beautiful charcoal lines mark out the uncanny grins of skull-faces.

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Colors:

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• armless.a.01
• flesh.n.01
• disintegrate.v.01
• figure.n.04
• inverted.s.01
• headless.a.01
• contemporary grotesque
• drawing
• erotic
• etching/engraving
• american