Last fall, Raleigh artist Nancy S. Baker shook things up by riffing on three popular paintings from the NCMA’s American collection. This spring, we highlight three photographic works by Brooklyn artist Anthony Goicolea. Goicolea’s billboards coordinate nicely with the solo exhibition of his works, Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea, which will be on view in the East Building through July 24. The artist has long been interested in fabricating images of new, fantastical spaces that are familiar yet strange, enticing yet unsettling. The photographs the artist chose for Park Pictures stem from a series examining issues of environmental destruction, globalization, and the influence of humanity on the world at large. In addition to being inspired by the world around him, Goicolea also takes cues from art history. As he notes, “I’m influenced by the tradition of the sublime in 19th-century American landscape paintings,” much as Nancy Baker had been in our previous billboard series. Goicolea continues, “My series of photographs treat their environments as hyper-exaggerated frontiers … providing physical evidence and visual proof of an ongoing past narrative.”

Guardian features a snowy scene, completely populated by dogs that dwell amid the ruins of a colorful town. As such, it contrasts starkly with the verdant, lush surroundings of the Museum Park in springtime. Guardian can be seen in a different context in Alter Ego. Similarly, Ocean and Ghost Ship reveal water-based scenes that contrast with the types of landscapes in the Museum Park itself. Overall, the artist noted that his rationale for choosing images for Park Pictures was simple: “I thought it would be interesting to present a landscape within a landscape.” The novelty of the Park Pictures project was certainly an enticement for the artist. “I have never had any outdoor work presented before, but it has always been a bit of a fantasy of mine! I love the idea, and I am excited to see the billboards actualized.”

Anthony Goicolea, Guardian, 2008, digital print on vinyl. Photo credit: twbuckner via the NCMA Flickr group.

This work, made possible by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, is part of an ongoing series of outdoor art projects, Art Has No Boundaries, commissioned by the NCMA to encourage visitors to actively explore the Museum Park.

Last week five other interns and I were led through the Contemporary and African art galleries by Curators Linda Dougherty and Kinsey Katchka. Before our tour we learned about the curators’ roles in the Museum and discussed the process of selecting art and displaying it in a museum setting. The curators intrigued me with stories of weekend trips to New York and Miami for various art shows, where they scout out up-and-coming artists. They answered our many questions and then proceeded to the galleries.

It wasn’t until we stopped at several photographs that I found a piece of art that really piqued my interest. Anthony Goicolea’s Still Life with Pig (2005) is pleasantly shocking. Two young boys huddle underneath a lean-to while a decaying pig lies lifelessly on a log before them.

Upon closer inspection I noticed blue and yellow war paint on the boys’ faces. Like Tom and Huck, the boys appear to be resting from adventurous explorations of the woods surrounding them. I almost lost focus of the photo when one of the curators mentioned a little-known fact: Goicolea’s photograph is actually a fabricated image, created with the help of Photoshop and a vivid imagination.

The objects in the picture are real, but the juxtaposition of them is not. Goicolea layered photos of the various objects on his computer, meticulously placing each layer so as to confuse the viewer into thinking that somewhere, somehow, this scene might have happened. Goicolea’s picture is indeed a work of art, a creation based on fantasy and reality. But in my world, Photoshop exists on fashion magazine covers and the advertisements that go inside them, not hanging in art galleries. Goicolea’s work, perhaps not as aesthetically pleasing as airbrushed starlets, had me questioning my perception of what is art.