Jimmie Durham
A Dead Deer, 1986-1986
Sculpture
, 120 x 72 x 14.4 cm
skull, bone, wood, paint, string, plastic
The characters in Ovid’s Metamorphoses change easily their appearance: from human to animal, from human to tree - the border between the two different beings is often unclear. Jimmie Durham uses these elements in works as A Dead Deer. A deer skull is painted with bright colours and attached on a thick branch as if it was the animal’s body; two real deer-legs are attached to the middle of the branch. These ‘dead’ materials form altogether a tree-deer or a deer-tree that does not really look dead, but instead seems to be dancing for us.
