Dimensions: image: 1219 x 1397 mm
Copyright: © Carey Young, courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Carey Young’s photograph, "Body Techniques (after Circles, Ulrich Ruckriem, 1971)," presents a suited man digging a small circle in the desert. Editor: Immediately, I see a critique of labor and futility. The man's formal attire clashes violently with the desolate landscape and his pointless task. Curator: Absolutely. Young often explores the performance of corporate identity. The gesture references Land Art while questioning its heroic scale in a globalized, neoliberal context. Editor: It's as if he's enacting a ritual of some kind, perhaps a Sisyphean task within the framework of late capitalism. What is he building? Or destroying? Curator: The location is significant. This was shot in Dubai, a city built on rapid development and, some would argue, unsustainable practices. Editor: The image really encapsulates the tensions between progress and ecological awareness, labor and capital. Curator: Indeed. Young encourages us to reflect on the absurdities inherent in our systems. Editor: It is a reminder of the human cost of progress.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/young-body-techniques-after-circles-ulrich-ruckriem-1971-p79825
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In this colour photograph the artist Carey Young is depicted in a dusty, deserted landscape wielding a stonemason’s hammer, which she uses to mark out a small circle in the arid ground around her. In the distance a row of newly built, almost identical pastel-coloured houses obscure the horizon line below a hazy sky. No other figures populate the scene, and the fact that Young wears a plain, dark grey business suit and high heels only serves to emphasise the incongruity of her action in the landscape.
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