Them

In November, 2004, Richard Dupont agreed to take part in an anthropometry study, and travelled to the General Dynamics facility on The Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio to undergo a full body laser scan. The result of this scan was a hyper-accurate 3D model of the surface of his body. Updating the body art of the 1970s for the digital age, this virtual body of the artist became the raw material for a variety of subsequent works in sculpture, installation, printmaking and animation. As Dupont has said "I was interested in examining myself from the outside, in an anthropological sense -- like so much information -- and then building the body back into space out of that information." His often obsessive works have involved extreme examples of this active detachment such as piling up 180 castings of his own lifeless body or building sculptural forms out of 10 years-worth of collected personal trash.
The present work, Them, executed in 2005, consists of eight slightly distorted resin castings arranged on a large table base. As the viewer moves around the table, the figures appear to be shifting shape in an uncanny act of dematerialization. This present work was the precursor to Dupont's major installation, Terminal Stage, at Lever House in 2008.