Mouse - created by Rona Pondick
ILCE-7RM5_40_3.jpg
Mouse - created by Rona Pondick
ILCE-7RM5_40_1.jpg
Tech stuff:
ISO 800/Shutter 1/160s /F2.8 / 40mm / Mode Manual
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Mouse
Artist: Rona Pondick American, born 1952
Date: 2002–2006
Medium: stainless steel
Dimensions: 16.5 x 24.1 x 43.2 cm (6 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 17 in.)
Classifications Sculpture
Credit Line: Chapin Riley Fund at the Greater Worcester Community Foundation
Term: sculpture, steel, casting
Object number: 2009.146
Rona Pondick’s mutant self-portrait—a hybrid of human and animal, likeness and invention—evokes compelling cultural parallels from the Egyptian Sphinx and Ovid’s Metamorphoses to the disturbing promises of contemporary genetic manipulation. For this sculpture, Pondick embellished the factual detail of her life-cast head with a hand-carved cascade of invented hair that cradles a nearly bodiless mouse. What makes Pondick’s Mouse so convincing while unmistakably not of our world is the seamless transition from one realm to another—human to animal, skin texture to mirror finish, life size to miniature. The texture of human flesh contrasted with the polished and abstracted animal body dramatically affects our physical and emotional responses to the sculpture and locates it in the psychological realm of human experience. Inspired by Constantin Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse (whose disembodied head rests on its side with eyes closed), Pondick’s Mouse conveys a psychological interiority that can be interpreted as introspection, fantasy, or alienation.
Exhibition Location Gallery 4002
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