Richard Barnes: Animal Logic

Academy Animals 2004 from Animal Logic-Ed. Of 5 + 2 AP chromogenic print 20 X 24 in.

Bau-Xi Photo
September 10-24, 2011

Have you ever wanted to know what is happening in the rooms marked Closed for visitors in the museums? Internationally known, award winning artist Richard Barnes spent ten years in those rooms, and through his lens we can see that there is actually nothing natural in a natural history museum.

The restoration team’s effort to create reality is unrealistic. In order to capture the typical landscape they generalize it, creating a fake one. The sky is either too bright or too watery and seems already dusty the moment it is painted. A caretaker is vacuuming the snowy ground beneath the feet of a buffalo while other animals become surrealistic ghosts in their plastic wraps. The habitats are alienated from real life and preserved in order to illustrate nature, a contradiction that creates a “morte vita”, a dead life.

Emese Krunák-Hajagos

  1 comment for “Richard Barnes: Animal Logic

  1. this small blurb was amzingly well written and really makes you view this is in a different light. I love the oxymoron of ” a dead life”

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