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The naked, the dead, and the fully clothed
Arno Rafael Minkkinen and John Huddleston at the DeCordova; Clothing speaks at Tufts
BY RANDI HOPKINS
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In one black-and-white photograph, a bare, bony leg arched at the knee delicately mimics the curve of a massive rock rising out of the ocean behind it. In another, two sinewy forearms reach out of the pond to grasp a tree branch, appearing to grow into it like another limb, albeit with fingers. The work of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, a Finnish-American artist who has been photographing himself naked in nature since the early 1970s, is the subject of "Saga: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Photographs 1970-2005," one of three shows opening at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park on September 10. In the surreal images, which are not manipulated outside the artist’s own extreme physical contortions, Minkkinen quietly melds his own form with the landscape (woodlands, snowdrifts, sand dunes) in ways that come to evoke the physical feats of enlightened spiritual figures. Landscape is the repository of memory and loss, and of amnesia and indifference in "John Huddleston: Killing Ground, Photographs of the Civil War and the Changing American Landscape." Huddleston photographs famous Civil War battlefields, then juxtaposes his contemporary color images with black-and-white copies of historical photographs of the same locations. His pairings explore the legacy of war, seeking physical and sacred traces of slaughter in sites that might now be tourist attractions or strip malls. Finally there’s "Robert Arnold: Zeno’s Paradox." Zeno’s Paradox, you’ll recall, is a race between Achilles and a tortoise in which Achilles gives the tortoise a piddling 10-meter headstart and then seems unable to catch up. Arnold’s version is a video that takes a long look at a tree in a park, a tree that bears a photograph of the tree in the park. From radical fashion designer Issey Miyake, who has described his extreme clothing as exploring the space between the human body and the cloth that covers it (he’s big on pleated fabrics that purchasers configure to suit themselves), to performance artist Andrew Mowbray, whose white vinyl Bachelor’s Suit could teach us all a little something about sex and fishing, "Pattern Language: Clothing As Communicator," which opens at Tufts University Art Gallery on September 8, goes deep in its investigation of the nexus of clothing, art, and life. Featuring 43 works by artists from around the world, this show includes seminal fashion in contemporary art history by Joseph Beuys and Rosemarie Trockel, along with clothes that think about the body, clothes that think about architecture, urban life, gender, and social roles, clothes that see each body as unique, and clothes that see clothes as a stand-in for everybody. "Saga: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Photographs 1970-2005," "John Huddleston: Killing Ground, Photographs of the Civil War and the Changing American Landscape," and "Robert Arnold: Zeno’s Paradox" | DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, 51 Sandy Pond Road, Lincoln | Sept 10–Jan 8 | 781.259.8355 or http://www.decordova.org/| "Pattern Language: Clothing As Communicator" | Tufts University Art Gallery, Aidekman Arts Center, 40R Talbot Avenue, Medford | Sept 8–Nov 13 | 617.627.3518 or http://www.tufts.edu/as/gallery.
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