Mark "Devo" Mothersbaugh's 2005 gallery tour of his new Beautiful Mutants collection stops next at Seattle's Roq La Rue gallery. (Previous Beautiful Mutants post here.) The exhibition of these hand- and digitally-"corrected" vintage photographs opens this Friday, September 9, but all of the works can also be seen online. From the artist statement:
Symmetry – Rorschach's patterns, though abstract, suggest different visual images to each person who views them, and each interpretation is correct. Objects in this world are what they are to you because of how you happen to see them.People are all hiding something. Many know exactly what that is, while most probably have no idea. Our asymmetrical exterior hides the true contents of each of us.
Aztec Indians built gigantic Kaleidoscopic pyramids that focused light from the sun through complex polished silver mirrors that reflected and flipped images of humans onto walls, giving rise to the celebration of a quest for true symmetry in their lives.
In the 1800's people would flirt with these ideas and play parlor games with signatures,paper cuttings, etc. It was in the early 1900's that Rorschach and other psychiatrists developed theories and medical practices (inverted, as it turned out) based on their intuitive hunches regarding symmetry and the internal workings of man. Humans, great pretenders to bi-lateral symmetry, are in actuality, closer to potatoes in their lack of precise symmetry.
A closer look reveals what is truly inside the people around us.
