Oil
2014 - Photography (Photography)
38.1 x 30.48 cm
Sam Contis
Sam Contis’s photographs explore the relationship of bodies to landscape, and the shifting nature of gender identity and expression. Oil is part of a photographic series Contis made at Deep Springs College, one of the United States’s last all-male institutions of higher learning, located in a remote desert valley on the California–Nevada border. Oil features a hand in front of an open hood of a car, checking the oil. The person’s fingers are slick with oil, and the lighting is dramatically contrasted, so that every detail of the hand is perceptible, while the car engine in the background is barely discernible. Contis’s images capture the beauty of the high desert in macro and microscopic views. The resonance of earth and body and the sensual echoes of human and animal give her photographs an Ovidian sense of imminent metamorphoses. Contributing to this sensation of superabundant possibility is the mythic potency of the American West. For some, the West symbolizes freedom and self-determination even as it has defined a rough, and often violent ideal, of masculine identity. Deep Springs can seem, in many ways, to be an embodiment of these ideals. Contis’s photographs allude to another side of both the historical and present reality; that is, an experience of gender that is more nuanced and ambiguous. In the early days of the American West, when women were few and far between, it was not uncommon for men to take on traditionally female roles. Similarly, at Deep Springs, gender identity has always been open to fluid expression. Though this suite of images represents the violence and sensuality at the heart of her project, coursing through Contis’s photographs is a powerful countercurrent of tenderness.
Throughout Sam Contis’s work is an unobtrusive tenderness, a submerged savagery, and an elusive, but insistent sensuality. While Contis’s photographs reflect the history of photography, they also examine a more thorny and contemporary issue: the development of masculine identity. Her recent projects demonstrate, if there was ever any doubt, that old-fashioned photography in the hands of an artist can feel completely contemporary.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » THEARTNEWSPER
Podcast | The Year in Review 2023: the biggest stories and the best shows | The Week in Art Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search The Week in Art podcast The Year in Review 2023: the biggest stories and the best shows From the British Museum thefts to the consequences in art and heritage of the Israel-Hamas war Sponsored by Hosted by Ben Luke ...
© » KADIST
Matthew Angelo Harrison
2016In Bodily Study of Unthinking Groups, Harrison combines two disparate materials into one stratified stack: automotive clay (used in detailing cars) forms the earthy base, while fragments of zebra skull become imbedded in this falsified soil...
© » THEARTNEWSPER
‘Gangbusters’ domestic economy sees prices rise at India Art Fair Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search India analysis ‘Gangbusters’ domestic economy sees prices rise at India Art Fair The region’s previous art market boom and bust has some at the New Delhi event questioning whether this new wave can be sustained Kabir Jhala 2 February 2024 Share A visitor at Chemould Prescott Road's stand at India Art Fair 2024 Courtesy of India Art Fair Quiet confidence has turned into bullishness at the 15th edition of India Art Fair (IAF) in New Delhi (until 4 February), South Asia’s largest commercial art event...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
The frenemy’s handshake: The Singapore Trilogy as political theatre | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints The Second Breakfast Company July 29, 2021 By Clarissa Oon (2,650 words, 8-minute read) My phone vibrated one night, with a notification that Singapore political party Workers’ Party (WP) was premiering a live video on Instagram...
© » KADIST
Mark Leckey
2004In Made In Heaven , we are face to face with a sculptural apparition, a divine visitation in the artist’s studio...
© » KADIST
Pangrok Sulap
2021All Nations are Created Special is a black and white woodcut print by the artist collective Pangrok Sulap...
© » KADIST
Marion Scemama, David Wojnarowicz
1989Political artist, painter, writer, performer, photographer, David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992 in New York City, was one of the leading figures of the New York Downtown artistic scene of the 80s...