People often feel the presence of someone when no one is there.
This may be a way of embodying the fear of the unknown, the ghost
under the bed. It may be a near-palpable memory of an absent
person, triggered by an article of clothing, a photograph, a scent,
an old recording. And it can at rare times be a feeling of
immanence, of being close to spirit or divinity. Regardless of the
source, the sense of presence-in-absence reinforces a need - which
seems hard-wired into the psyche - to experience a human essence
outside the body. The exhibition and its accompanying catalog
include artworks that indicate such presences through surrogates:
shadows, imprints, or masks; objects as memento mori, or as other
matter or energy. The title is derived from the phenomenon known as
the phantom limb syndrome. Those experiencing this have lost some
part of their bodies but feel it to be still present. While it is a
source of sensation and frequently pain, the phantom limb here
symbolizes the weight of absence, the longing to fill the spaces
that accrue through life. Phantom Bodies includes works by artists
who create the perception of a human aura through the use of
material traces, shadow and light, or the sublimation of the body
into other forms of matter and energy. Palpably felt yet invisible,
the phantom limb of the title is here an analogy for absent persons
whose vestiges link memory, consciousness, and the concept of the
soul. Artists in the exhibition include Magdalena Abakanowicz,
Barry X Ball, Christian Boltanski, Janet Cardiff and George Bures
Miller, Adam Fuss, Ken Gonzalez-Day, Alicia Henry, Damien Hirst,
Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Elizabeth King, Deborah Luster,
Sally Mann, Teresa Margolles, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat, Gerhard
Richter, Doris Salcedo, Annelies Å trba, and Bill Viola. The
catalog contains color plates accompanied by illustrated essays by
Martha Buskirk, Lisa Saltzman, and Eleanor Heartney; an
introduction by Mark W. Scala; and a foreword by Susan H. Edwards.
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