Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault conceived selfportrait.map to explore this in a contemporary way using new digital imaging tools.
The earliest map projections were produced by first visually and later mathematically projecting three-dimensional details onto two-dimensional surfaces and with the advent of computers ever more complex objects could be electronically recorded and transformed. As artists accustomed to working with physical materials like clay, stone or steel Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault considered the manipulation of three-dimensional forms in virtual space, like map projections, as a non-traditional extension of the sculptural process.
selfportrait.map looks at the digital reordering of three-dimensional forms through a reshaping of the digitized body and offers an alternate way of representing the human figure by remapping its surface onto a set of simple shapes. The fragility and tenuous nature of our existence is a reoccurring theme in the artists’ work and, in the process of unfolding the scans, the computer generated a complex network of jagged seams and torn edges. Although stitching utilities exist that allow the projections to be repaired, Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault considered the holes and gaps to be evocative of both the landmasses of maps and the vulnerability of life.
selfportrait.map is a suite of 18 chromogenic prints mounted on aluminum. A series of pigment prints was also produced.
