January 21 through March 26, 2006
The Minnesota Museum of American Art presented Only Human: Exploring Contemporary Portraits, an exhibition of new artwork by 9 local artists who approach the long-standing tradition of portraiture in unconventional ways. The exhibition featured over 30 works of art including painting, photography, prints, drawings, video, and sculpture.
 
Katinka Galanos, Hedge/Andy and Mr. Hedges, ©2005
Only Human included: Xavier Tavera’s imposing five-foot square photographs of hulky, adrenalin-pumped, and sometimes bloody extreme fighters who have just emerged from their fighting cages; Jay Wittenberg’s meticulously painted oil portraits of famous to obscure women authors, among them Louisa May Alcott, Sylvia Plath, and George Eliot; and Suzanne Kosmalski’s prints and video work inspired by icon and sex symbol Marlene Dietrich in her final performance at age 72.
David Hamlow, Collector/Collaborator Project Four, Archival Sturcture Three: Dodecahedron, ©2005
The exhibition featured Peter B. Becker Nelson’s video Nine Monologues, an investigation of gender and identity, Ernest Arthur Bryant III’s racially and politically charged airbrush and graffiti homages to Mike Tyson, Osama bin Laden, and others, Ben Olson’s emotional acrylic portraits of his model Emma, and Katinka Galanos’s digitally altered and obscured reinterpretations of traditional portrait photography.
Anthony Marchetti, 3-221 MSTBR, ©2005
Only Human also included portraits and self-portraits without recognizable images of people. Several large photographs by Anthony Marchetti record the bizarre detritus left scattered in recently-vacated apartments allowing an unintended look into curious personalities. A sculptural self-portrait by David Hamlow—created out of 3 years worth of paperboard food packaging materials, receipts, and other personal memorabilia—reveals his Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde food consumption habits and much about him as an individual.
Jay Wittenberg, Portrait of Ms. Hightower, ©2004
The non-traditional, contemporary portraits in Only Human expose the raw humanity and fallibility in peculiar individuals and ordinary people.
Peter B. Becker Nelson, Still from Nine Monologues, ©2004
| 
