Currently working and living in Germany, Horn has been working as an artist experimenting with kinetics, light, and energy since the 1970s. Her early works explore extensions of the body, such as her Finger Gloves, which bridge the gap between the space between body and world. She has also been making movies which feature many of her works such as The Peacock Machine. Each of Horn’s works leads the one created after it. She takes ideas from her first work, transfers it into her second, and so forth. Her current work explores special installation and flirts intimately with the boundaries of time and space.
(Finger Gloves, 1972)Jana Sterbak
Some call her a feminist and it’s not hard to understand why, considering her sculptures. Sterbak is mainly a sculptor who incorporates power, control, and seduction into her works. She also plays with sexuality as a source of control within the technological world. Her works often take the form of garment-like constructions. Perhaps her most interesting piece is Remote Control, a hoop skirt designed much too big for a normal female so, when she gets into it, she must be suspended like a child and use the remote control to wheel the skirt where she wants to go. Audiences also have partial control, as they have a remote that controls the wheels, so the artist is only in control half the time. Many of her works are like this; seductive, controlling, and, at times, eerily meticulous.
(Remote Control, 1989)
(Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Anorectic, 1987)
Tim Hawkinson
Obsessed with the body, Tim Hawkinson has spent the better part of his adult life creating replicas of himself in various different forms. His interests in death, life, and the passage of time can be seen with clarity in each of the pieces he crafts. In the early 1990s he created a piece called Uberorgan, a giant, stadium-sized bagpipe made out of miles of stretched plastic and bits of stray wire. His fascination with the large and unprecedented has become something of a new concept, even for the artist himself. As previously stated, Hawkinson likes to incorporate the re-imaging of his own body into his works. In Pentecost, he forms a large, 3-dimensional tree out of cardboard and suspends twelve life-size electronic replicas of himself on the branches. The “Tims” are designed to beat out hymn music at whimsical intervals. Hawkinson currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife.
(Uberorgan, 2000)Janine Antoni
Antoni is also one of those artists who focus on her own body. All of her works are either made from her bodily material (such as fingernails) or they are somehow connected to her body through mechanical use. A good example of her body’s mechanically generated art is Gnaw, where Antoni displays two 600 pound blocks, one made of chocolate, the other, lard, and takes bites out of them each day. She chews and spits the chocolate and lard into separate molds to create a chocolate praline tray and manufactured lipstick. Her works also play with idea of animalness versus humanness. She has created numerous works involving cattle and the meat packing industry.
Ann Hamilton
Although she received an MFA in sculpture, Hamilton diversifies her work in the form of painting, installation, and film as well as her traditional schooling media. She is, perhaps, most well-known for taking small, everyday objects and transforming them into extraordinary items. Hamilton created Toothpick Suit by gluing thousands of toothpicks “porcupine style” onto a suit which she then wore in public. Many of her works exchange body organs. For example, Hamilton spent time with a pinhole camera in her mouth as she talked to people. Each time her mouth opened, she got a shot of what it saw. Her interest in sensory organs and exchangeable parts won her the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1993.
(Toothpick Suit, 1985)
What her mouth sees.
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