Ed Atkins | "Safe Conduct Epidermal", 2016 | (for Parkett 98)
The epidermis of the head and neck of the artist’s most recent digital surrogate— made real and human-scaled. Used in his video, Safe Conduct, this epidermis of the artist’s surrogate has been carefully bespoke-bruised, battered— flecked and streaked with grime, tears, exposure. Printed on rubber, the surrogacy of the artist’s digital figure becomes that of a mask.
Read a Parkett Text on Ed Atkins
Parkett Vol. 98
Quote from Parkett
"This isn't art about intimacy in the digital era; it's using the digital form to illuminate something much closer to the core of intimacy itself - how we seek it from each other and from art; how we can experience simultaneous attraction and revulsion to expressions of feeling."
Leslie Jamison, Parkett No. 98, 2016
Additional Quote
“You'd be hard-pressed to find an artist whose work is as viscerally affecting—haunting even—while at the same time clearly breaking new ground in the possibilities afforded art by new technology. Ed Atkins is a tough artist, and this is a tough image printed on rubber, but, since it makes uncommonly palpable the vulnerable synthetic skins that distinguish his videos, it's an important one.” - Artspace
"Safe Conduct Epidermal", 2016 | (for Parkett 98)
Archival pigment print on rubber,
60 x 51 x 0,1 cm (23 5/8 x 20 x 1/8”), two grommets, printed by Laumont, New York.
Ed. 35 / XX, signed and numbered certificate.
Artist’s Statement
”The epidermis of the head and neck of the artist’s most recent digital surrogate— made real and human-scaled. Used in his video, Safe Conduct, this epidermis of the artist’s surrogate has been carefully bespoke-bruised, battered— flecked and streaked with grime, tears, exposure. Printed on rubber, the surrogacy of the artist’s digital figure becomes that of a mask.”
Contribution to Parkett Vol. 100/101
”Such a singular treat to work with Parkett. More than any other apparently equivalent experience, the writing solicited alone entirely expanded and exposed the recesses of discourse that flow through my work. Gone was any semblance of coddling or rehashing what had been – in its stead appeared the most absorbed and precarious kind of responses. It was so enlivening to be part of something so studious and tempered. And wild! The results were wild, to me. Working in close cahoots with Nikki Columbus was a privilege and a pleasure, and something that could really only ever have emerged via as faithful and sincere a structure as Parkett. I felt retrieved, inverted. And I’d never have made a great flap of trammelled face otherwise.”
Parkett Text
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Parkett Cover
Ed Atkins’ work featured on the cover of Parkett no. 98
