Who hasn’t walked into a museum or gallery with very three dimensional or tactile works and wanted to touch the pieces? Sometimes there is just something about the texture or material of a piece where you feel that the intent of the artist cannot be fulfilled unless you are able to feel it. The work of Jamie McCartney practically screams out to be touched or caressed. A sculptor who works with lifecasting, McCartney is masterful at capturing and manipulating the bodies of his subjects.
Though McCartney does regular body castings as one might expect, it is in the erotic castings that he particularly caught my attention. From the intricate detail of follicles and pores of both male and female genitalia to the fascinating internal castings of the female vagina, McCartney shows a passion and sensitivity for his subject matter. It seems neither clinical nor pornographic and yet it is endlessly fascinating.
The simple fascination of just looking or wanting to touch is expanded on in McCartney’s composite piece, “The Spice of Life”, in which 84 separate casts are brought together to form a more complex piece capturing the diversity of the sexual body’s expression including both flaccid and erect penises, large breasts, small breasts, inverted nipples and a wide range of vaginal typologies. Though each could be a work in its own right, together they transcend basic mimicry and truly become something else, and something powerfully sexual and attractive.
article by Kayla
