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RE-VIEWING THE NUDE / REFUSING THE VIEW

In ‘Re-viewing the Nude’ and ‘Refusing the View’ Susan Coolen proposes, with four photographic works, a reflection on the female nude. Here composite body parts are segmented, and perspective and point of view are disrupted.

The starting point of this work is the ‘nude’ of art history. In a journey that goes from the idea of the classical sculpture, the gestured body of the crucifixion made erotic female, receptacle of light in the early days of photography, the deconstruction of the body in advertising and even re-constructions, Coolen probes the dynamics and complexities of ‘looking’ by asking that the view is taken in the sense of active participation, where one is placed between the large scale re-segmented body and its isolated female torso. Here the large body looms over and behind the viewer as they review these definitions proscribed offered to us, even imposed, through time and history.

The work of Coolen, in a naked manner, reintroduces and asks us to question our past perceptions and break their codes. It is an attempts to disrupt the sense[s] and move time and context while exploring what is at once personal and political.