Human Statue Series (Sky Room)
Published by Lisa Ivorian-Jones for the New Museum, 2019
Edition of 20
Signed and numbered on verso
Dye sublimation print on aluminum
Unframed:
24 x 30 in (61 x 76.2 cm)
Framed:
25 x 31 x 1 1/2 in (63.5 x 78.74 x 3.8 cm)
Frank Benson (b. 1976, Virginia, USA) has created Human Statue Series (Sky Room), a stunning new dye sublimation print exclusively for the New Museum. Each print is on an aluminum substrate and presented in a welded aluminum frame custom designed by the artist.
Human Statue Series (Sky Room) depicts Benson’s Human Statues gathered together for the first time in a virtual recreation of the New Museum’s iconic Sky Room. Created over the past fifteen years, the figures are arranged in chronological order from left to right. The Human Statues series begins with Human Statue (2005), a sculpture of a living statue performer in stunning detail, which was first made using a painstaking life-casting process. This lifelike fiberglass sculpture was later scanned and imported into a 3D modeling program to be rendered along with the artist’s other figurative sculptures. Human Statue (Jessie) (2011), the second in the series, is a portrait of artist and dancer Jessie Gold, and was Benson’s first sculpture made using the digital 3-D sculpting tools that would become a central part of his process. The third in the series, Juliana (2015) is a portrait of artist, poet and DJ Juliana Huxtable, created for the 2015 New Museum’s “Triennial: Surround Audience.” The fourth sculpture, located in the bottom right of the image, is Benson’s latest work, Castaway (2019), a bronze sculpture of a man marooned on an island. Illuminating the scene of Human Statue Series (SkyRoom) is a raking light, which was created using a rendering engine that simulates the morning sun as it would stream through the Sky Room’s southeast windows. The serrated edge of the shadow that cuts diagonally across the backdrop is cast by the expanded metal cladding that covers the exterior of the New Museum. Human Statue Series (Sky Room) (2005–18) reflects Benson’s longstanding interest in the possible mergers of photography and digital sculpture while paying homage to his history and connection with the Museum, where Juliana (2015) was first shown.