Continuing through June 30, 2013
Martin Schoeller’s "Identical: Portraits of Twins" is a feast for those who love to see. If you’ve ever been told, “You look exactly like (so-and-so),” this show is also for you. Schoeller's line-ups of twins, along with the odd triplets and even quadruplets, challenges the notions of uncanny resemblance by getting us instead to pay closer attention to the differences — the nose widths, head and chin tapers, and the slightest creases and depths of eyes and eyelids. Minuscule heightening of symmetry in one twin can make him or her more attractive than the other (though of course 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' and all that). The added poetry of these comparisons lies in the nearly intangible differences that resist articulate discernment: "the eyes are closer together" or "further apart" is about as much descriptive language as can be dredged up in many cases.
The photographer, who has done numerous portraits for The New Yorker and whose signature has been especially close-up facial portraits of sports and entertainment celebrities, here modifies that strategy by including a little bit of neck and shoulder in the shots. That minor change gives viewers a little more distance to meditate on the side-by-side comparisons. Not all twins are presented side-by-side, however; Schoeller's installation has a pronounced sculptural bent, with the larger portraits at seven-and-a-half feet, and with pairings alternately spread apart, stacked vertically, each twin cut in half and spliced together, or in the quadruplets' case, on a smaller scale in a grid. Progressively smaller unframed prints cluster together madly on one end of the main space, like a portraitist-cum-scientist trying to parse out the disorienting crush of sameness and difference.
Published courtesy of ArtSceneCal ©2013
