Arm, Plant, Bottles, Wood

Michele Abeles claims that the male bodies she fragments have no greater importance than the bottles, pots, rocks, scraps of paper and flashes of bright color that she composes into enigmatic still lifes. Their presence is substantial enough to interest anyone who enjoys the tradition of the nude. Abeles is not the first to create visual puzzles where picture planes refuse to behave according to convention, and real objects have a flat, cut-out quality - but she has put the themes together in a strikingly original fashion - especially in the way in which she mocks the facile tools of computer manipulation.