ANTHONY GOICOLEA
b. 1971, CubaAnthony Goicolea is a master of digital manipulation. Although largely based in photography, his practice also includes drawing and video and, though the merging of surrealism and fantasy, Goicolea makes poignant social comment. Goicolea gained international recognition for his unsettling technique of arranging, within a single frame, photographic clones of himself in various poses. His earlier works mimed adolescent obsessions as Goicolea, although in his mid-thirties, portrayed himself as pre-pubescent boys engaged in childhood pranks - often with alarmingly awkward narratives and strong sexual references. Subtle details explore themes of religion and conformity and address the social conventions of age and gender. Goicolea complicates suggestions of pornography and voyeurism through this use of self-portraiture; as the protagonists he becomes both the voyeur and the exhibitionist.
Other photographic works reflect an interest in the artificial world of genetic cloning, and highlight the great unknown effects that these processes inflict on their unaware subjects. In more recent years Goicolea has worked in the mediums of drawing and video. Obsessive actions are taken to the extreme in works where simple childish actions become exaggerated into the absurd. Removed from the reality-grounded medium of photography, Goicolea’s drawings allow him to explore a much darker narrative. These works appear as private sketches from a disturbed adolescent mind, which could be, perhaps, found in a schoolboy’s notebook.
Anthony Goicolea is a Cuban American artist based in New York.
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