Warriors

Artist Anthony Goicolea (American, born 1971)

Date2001

MediumBlack and white C-prints (diptych)

DimensionsEach panel: 27 3/4 × 120 inches (70.5 × 304.8 cm);
Overall: 27 3/4 × 240 inches (70.5 × 609.6 cm)

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineAcquired through the generosity of the Donors to the Contemporary Art Fund

Terms

Photographs
Chromogenic print
Youth
American

Object number2004.020 a,b

Label CopyAnthony Goicolea is the only person in his photographs, although there is often more than one character inhabiting a variety of semiartificial worlds. In Warriors, the photographer, then thirty, is a surprisingly convincing adolescent. Using costume, lighting, and elaborate makeup pulled together by masterful digital manipulation, Goicolea is able to cast clones of himself in dramatic compositions. In Warriors Goicolea even makes a formal nod to cinema as the photograph’s extraordinary length and short height bring to mind a strip of film. Trying to make sense of the scene’s chaotic activity, we are invited to come up with all kinds of stories: Have the boys staged a summer-camp coup? Did they lock the camp director up in the shed? Or are they a feral pack of warriors come from the woods? Whatever we choose to believe, the photograph leaves us with tangible sensations of the confusion and complexities that characterize adolescence. ("Staged, Performed, Manipulated," curated by Andrea Inselmann and presented at the Johnson Museum January 24 - June 7, 2015)

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