Item 1 Demo
IAN INGRAM
Lives and works in Austin, TX
“Logic keeps pulling me back to the mirror because it seems that most of my ‘being’ happens inside my skin. Countless hours in front of magnifying mirrors observing my skin, following patterns on the surface that lead over the lips and inside the cheek walls, gums, teeth and tongue, has piqued my curiosity about the thresholds between inner and outer. The patterns I have seen are uninterrupted from the outside surface to the inside surface. There is no clear boundary, no hard line. Air, water and spirit exist equally on both sides of our skin. My skin has been the focus of my observation for so long, and I have made so many renderings of my face that the format has become like a mantra, a phrase repeated until its meaning dissolves. What has become evident is that an image of the front half of the upper 10 percent of a body’s epidermis (the classic portrait bust that has been my touchstone) is a preposterous representation of that being. This show is a view of self that acknowledges as primary to our being the air that we breathe and the decay that we become.”
Ian Ingram, 2018