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The human body, abundantly (re)presented and celebrated in art history, is central to how we understand facets of identity such as gender and sexuality. People alter their bodies and style...
The human body, abundantly (re)presented and celebrated in art history, is central to how we understand facets of identity such as gender and sexuality. People alter their bodies and style to align with or rebel against social conventions and to express messages to others around them. In this series of work, Oliver has turned an erogenous zone such as the nipples into pliable and universal material. Even more eye-catching is that every ceramic nipple is different in size and formal set-up: spray-painted in different flashy colors and framed in an old-school wooden frame. Although small in size, their intensely theatrical design remodels the complexities we face around certain parts of our body into a performative, even appreciative act. Intersubjectivity comes into play: the framed nipples are taken up, interpreted, compared or contrasted with viewers library of mental images of the self versus others. As subconscious voyeurists of our own body we explore and perceive our uniqueness while celebrating the delicacy of differentiation.The framed nipple opens the door to a revived discussion on the conventions of beauty and sex(iness) and offers a new vision of the human body: imperfect, irregular, in constant evolution and dissolution but enchanting and remarkable. His fascination with representations of the body make conscious in a visual sense the very relationship between different ways of seeing. But only looking, no touching Oliver said.