Pigment prints on unbound copy of “Man: Teaching Notes from the Bauhaus” by Oskar Schlemmer.
159 original pigment prints
Offset, original edition from 1971
7 x 9 in. (10 x 12 in. framed)
2019–ongoing
Der Mensch (2019–ongoing) consists of a reworking of the book, Man (der Mensch) (1971) by German avant-garde artist Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943). Schlemmer’s idealized notion of human identity revolved around the study of the European male figure, whose normative and elemental "perfection" was articulated via the artist’s use of rigid geometries, abstraction and metricized proportions. At the core of his obsession was a desire for social standardization, which assumed an erasure and disciplining of difference. In this series of pigment prints made atop an unbound copy of Schlemmer's book, the techniques of annulment, redaction and photographic layering seek to engage with the underlying Eurocentric beliefs and assumptions which undergirded Schlemmer’s oeuvre.