It s lovely. It s an awesome piece, especially when one goes around to the side and sees the wires and pulleys by which Buis makes his sycamore tree sway in the lack of breeze. But it has about as much to do with cyborgs as my ass does. Curator Tyler Stallings, of course, manages to explain how these disparate elements all tie themselves together in his typically brilliant catalog essay. But I wanted to include it.
Stallings has good taste, after all.
But this is supposed to be a show about technology in general, cyborgs specifically. The best of the show, ironically, is the bit for which Stallings has received the most crap. Richard Chang included in his review of the exhibit a long sidebar of Stallings inclusion of his live-in girlfriend, Naida Osline, in the show. Her small Polaroids take sections of a human body and add cosmetics until things that really shouldn t be there like what looks like a rat tail slithering out of a man s hairy navel are indeed there. Another is a back with what looks like wormholes and the wounds from burrowing larvae.