Objectification and The Gaze: The Works of Jordan Wolfson (1/2)

Jordan Wolfson is an artist based in both New York City and Los Angeles.  His works include collages, performances, and digital animations.  He is best known for his most recent foray into animatronic art.  Wolfson's (Female figure) (2014) is a scantily clad animatronic female form programmed to gyrate and lock eyes with its audience.  The figure is smudged with dirt and grime and wears a partial witch mask.  Wolfson uses new technologies to make art that dances in the uncanny valley.  (Female figure) is designed to make the viewer uncomfortably aware of his or her own gaze and the damage done by the objectification of woman.  His latest work, Colored sculpture (2016), features a cartoon-like male marionette suspended from a framework of trusses by heavy chains.  The chains are connected to hoist trolleys that move along the trusses and lift and drop the marionette in a coordinated dance.  This sculpture also features animated eyes that gaze helplessly at the audience in expressions of pain and fear.  Again, the viewer is made to feel like her or she is witnessing a sort of torture and to feel empathy for the lifeless figure.  Jordan Wolfson is heavily influenced by the work of the artist Jeff Koons, but Wolfson's work pushes pop culture images into the digital age.  By adding the extra element of animation Wolfson creates pieces that seem to live in the world with us rather than existing solely as objects.  His use of technology leads us to question technology itself.  What are we creating and how do we move into this new frontier safely and ethically?