Museum Anatomy is a collection of documentary photographs of works from museums around the world that have been recreated onto the human body. The artwork goes through a significant process until reaching the final outcome, a photograph of Chadwick, sometimes unrecognizable as a human form, with an elaborate, detailed painting covering a portion of his body. The recreated paintings of these historic portraits recapture the subjects in their own moment in history. The resulting photographs reveal a unification of art combining antiquity, history and technology in a contemporary context.
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About the Artist
Artists, Chadwick Gray and Laura Spector, currently residing in Chiang Mai, Thailand, are well known for working in various mediums and oftentimes comfortably stretching into alternate bodies of work. They are both recipients of the prestigious New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award (2001), and they have been included as finalists for the Sovereign Asian Art Award in both 2006 and 2008 for two different bodies of work. Their work can be seen in exhibitions and collections around the world. While creating the Museum Anatomy project, they have had the privilege of working with curators from The Victoria & Albert Museum, The Prado, National Gallery (Prague), National Gallery (Athens), MuseuMAfricA, The Civica Museum (Palermo), University Art Museum, (Berkeley), National Gallery (Bangkok), among others. Currently, Museum Anatomy is expanding into works of art in the Asian region. Museum Anatomy, which began in 1996, recreates paintings of female portraits that exist in museum storage depositories onto the human body. The recreation of each painting is an ephemeral performance, taking from 8-15 hours to paint, then is photographed and washed off the body. The photographs are then enlarged to the size of the original painting, and displayed as contemporary works of art.