Getty Museum
Octopus
Creator
Tim HawkinsonAmerican Artist · 1960–present
All works by this person →Typically incorporating diverse household and industrial materials, and often mechanized to emit sound, evoke breath, or record the passage of time, Tim Hawkinson's art links form, process, and meaning. He frequently uses his own body as a source and subject. Fabricating most of his own conceptions using do-it-yourself technologies, Hawkinson undermines the preciousness of art while reasserting it
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 2006
- Medium
- Inkjet print collage
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
This enormous photographic collage depicts an octopus-like creature made up of dozens of human body parts, floating in a cosmic atmosphere. To form this fantastical illusion, Tim Hawkinson cut and assembled close-up photographs of his hands and lips with jigsaw-like precision. Thin white outlines created by razor-sharp cuts in the photographs draw attention to a tactile, hand crafted approach. The palm of the artist's hand faces out, with extra fingers added to denote the sea creature's eight limbs. Puckered lips, sometimes with tongue and/or gums showing, represent suction-cup like suckers typically associated with an octopus' anatomy. They radiate from a central point on the mollusk's underbelly, growing or shrinking in size to suggest shape and movement. What appear to be leftover cutouts encircling the lips are scattered across a dark "sky," evoking new moons and planetary eclipses. *Octopus* is one of four objects commissioned by the Getty Museum in 2006 for inclusion in the exhibition, Zoopsia: New Works by Tim Hawkinson.
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