The contemporary artist Will Kurtz changed the way I experience skin, human flesh in multiple ways, from texture to what I can see on the surface. He does this with his choice of medium; newspapers. “Newspaper is my medium of choice because it gives a raw, imperfect, ephemeral quality that reminds us that we are only here on this Earth for a short while,” says Kurtz.
I experienced his sculpture “Adorra” at the Avant Gallery at New York’s Hudson Yard. His life-sized figure “Adorra” is a landscape of rolls of flesh of a young woman, nude. Her hair is a pencil-straight red wig, and she is holding in one hand her cell phone, close to her mouth speaking into it. In the other hand, she balances a clear plastic cup. The newspaper’s surface of mixed black and white print and colored ads are like expressive brushstrokes of paint that animate and articulate her skin. In Adorra the unexpected patterns from Kurtz’s newspaper print breathe life into her painterly presence. Her unabashed attitude towards a less than an ideal body, she is unaware of the viewer or her nudity. What does surface through the collaged print that covers her body like a sheath is her sense of individuality. It is embedded in the wonderful swagger of her hips, the tilt of her head as she speaks into her phone oblivious to those around her.
Images are from Will Kurtz’s website at http://willkurtz.com You can see many more examples of his figural work, including famous people like Frank Sinatra.