Venus 1986

Mark Kostabi made "Venus" with paint, though when, I couldn’t say. What strikes me is the starkness of the shadows giving the classical figure a kind of robotic makeover. Look at the way Kostabi has handled the surface. It’s smooth, almost clinical, but then you notice the grain of the material underneath. It's not trying to trick you into thinking it's something else. See how that flat, almost teal background gives the figure a strange kind of depth. It’s like she’s floating, or maybe trapped, in this weird, undefined space. Then there is that rectangular shape on her head, is it a machine, a building? Kostabi reminds me a little of Giorgio de Chirico, with his mannequin figures and unsettling cityscapes. But while de Chirico aims for a kind of dreamlike melancholy, Kostabi is edgier, more ironic. He invites us to question what it means to be human in an increasingly technological world.