Lucy Mckenzie & Markus Proschek. LACUNA (Brussels/Rome).

Right in front of Rudolf Belling's mannequin, on a sky-blue background, you can see Lacuna (Brussels/Rome) by Lucy McKenzie and Markus Proschek, one of the new works in the exhibition. The theme of the whole versus the fragment, as well as the fluctuating position of the statue-mannequin boundary, are evident in the work. Fragments of antique statues have been digitally adapted to “wear” pieces from Atelier E.B’s Jasperwear collection. The Venus de Milo is considered a classical beauty largely because she is incomplete; she would be of lesser interest were she still whole. It is in the DNA of modernism to read fragmentation as intellectually and aesthetically pleasing (think, for example, of cubism’s dissolution of the picture plane, dadaist collages’ dissection of the mass media, and Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project).

LACUNA (Brussels/Rome) also illustrates a more insidious influence on Western notions of taste and value: the valorization of whiteness. The polychrome surface of mannequins links them to religious statuary, sex dolls, and folk art. It also evokes long-held beliefs about the subordination of “primitive” and non-Western cultures. The accepted idea that Greek and Roman statues were unpainted, a myth that is being slowly debunked, is part of the larger issue of classicism being willfully mischaracterized for political ends.