on the train coming home from philadelphia last weekend there was a somewhat interesting looking character in the seat next to me. we barely spoke until it was nearly time for him to get off, when he asked me if i was going all the way to new york, because he has a show going up there in a couple of weeks.
turns out he used to be a professor at sva, but now he's a medical student studying radiology. in his spare time he goes into the lab to put random things under the ct scanner and the resulting prints and videos are his art.
i finally went and checked out his website today. i guess i was expecting something more obscure and art-worldy from a former art school professor, but the sentence above pretty well illustrations the length and breadth of what he does. the videos are more interesting than the prints, just the object rotating 360 degrees on a loop. you can watch them twirl and twirl, glowing fluorescent green and magenta, filled with negative space. they're all ordinary objects. on the train he told me he has kids, and it looks like he's raided their toys for material. the little teddy bears and dogs and dolls are more compelling to me than anything else. their skins, the part that we identify with and cuddle and drool all over, are all shorn away. instead you see the seams where pieces overlap, and deep inside where they have little rudimentary skeletons or weighted fillings that allow them to sit upright, the little motor inside a dog that walks. it seems very sinister, like learning something about a friend you never wanted to know.