The Resurrection Puddle

Mixed media installation
2015

Controversial German anatomist Gunther von Hagens meets philosopher Michel Foucault in Pauline Curnier Jardin’s idiosyncratic rescripting of the Renaissance. In her Resurrection Plot the artist plays with the period’s emphasis on renewal, revival, and regeneration, and invites snails, cicadas, lizards, and snakes – all animals with the ability to don new skins throughout their lives – to join the dance. Among an abundance of references and incongruous juxtapositions, Curnier Jardin conjures a human-sized Bernard Palissy ceramic plate and its overflowing nature; a world of its own. Ignited by the artist’s fascination for the anatomical theaters that appeared in the fifteenth century and the era’s desire to enter and demys- tify the human body, The Resurrection Plot is a voyage amid freed écorchés, contrapposto boogies, and a terrifying Medusa that exposes the audience to fantasies of plastination and petrification. The myth of the “Renaissance Man” and its conquering hubris is undermined in a carnivalesque Gesamtkunstwerk.