TISSUES

Estevan Ruiz: TISSUES

Dateline

3004 Larimer Street, Denver, Colorado 80205

October 1-30, 2021

Review by Carissa Samaniego

Dateline (founded in 2014) is one of the few artist-run spaces to survive the gentrification that has transformed Denver’s legendary DIY turf north of downtown into the “arts district” we now know as RiNo. [1] Inside the small gallery, grow-light purple radiates from the floor-to-ceiling plant shelving and a couple of cats sunbathe near the door. This is an ironically well-suited environment for the artwork currently on display: sixteen identically-sized (16 x 16 inch) satin-finish photo prints, mounted without frames, which are hung side by side and equidistant along the gallery’s three white walls. This body of work is Estevan Ruiz’s solo exhibition, aptly titled, TISSUES. There are no titles for the individual photos. The exhibit text simply refers to them as “a curated selection of found photographs.” [2]

A panoramic view of Estevan Ruiz’s exhibition TISSUES on view at Dateline. Image by Carissa Samaniego.

Each photo is a unique image, but all are similarly enlarged and tightly cropped. They consist of up close snapshots of human flesh, pores, pockmarks, hair follicles, bruises, blemishes, and wrinkles. There is a limited color spectrum of epidermis pigmentation ranging from “pasty” to “rosy,” as well as blue, brown, and hazel eyes. Certain details stick out, including a set of braces, eyelashes gummed up with mascara, visible acne, and healed scars. One image is cropped to show only a set of lips and the surrounding stubble, with each individual stub of hair distinguishable from the next. Another focuses on a gnarly chin scar. A single eye takes up the entire frame in a few of the images, each from a seemingly different face. In many of these eye photos, you can also catch a glimpse of the subject’s environment through the reflection captured in their eyeball.

Two photographs from Estevan Ruiz’s exhibition TISSUES. Image by Carissa Samaniego.

It is easy for me to say that I do not like these images, as in, “I would not want one in my house.” But I cannot defend that as an adequate way to analyze the work we make and love, nor do I want to. After all, these are great examples of the camera’s and the photograph’s ability to capture our optical unconscious. It’s perfect material for a critical theory discussion! (Cue Rosalind Krauss and Walter Benjamin.) Except that I prefer facial pores—mine or others’—to remain in my optical and written unconscious.

Primed with zero information about their origins, my mind categorized these images as medical photographs of some kind. Looking at them, I thought, “Probably plastic surgery…maybe dermatology…are these from a morgue?…hope not cancer...” After speaking with the artist, I can accurately report that Ruiz printed the photographs in the exhibition from a lot of color film slides he purchased in an online auction. These were second hand images to the seller, who bought the archive from an estate sale and noted that they came from a cosmetic reconstruction practice (most likely based in the Midwest and certainly now defunct). In their span of existence, these photographs have functioned as technical aids in a clinical practice, curiosities at an estate sale, commodities in the online market, and now, an artist has re-contextualized them as contemporary art.

A photograph of lips and stubble from Estevan Ruiz’s exhibition TISSUES. Image by Carissa Samaniego.

Here, we could slide into a conversation about the artificial construction of beauty standards or the relationship between vanity and profit. We could scrutinize the photos for their compositional qualities or examine them as deconstructed portraits. Alternatively, we could treat them as cultural artifacts to critique capitalism and American idealism. We could even speculate on Ruiz’s intentions. Or we could obsess about their origins and be disturbed that these once-private photos have found their way into the public sphere.

These are all perhaps worthwhile discussions, but I’d argue that the power of the exhibition is located elsewhere: in the self-reflection it requires. Viewing the artwork, I found myself wrestling with some of the most fundamental questions: What is a photo? What is an image? What is the role of an artist? What about curators? What is art for? Who is art for? Who is it speaking for?

A view of one wall of photographs in Estevan Ruiz’s exhibition TISSUES. Image by Carissa Samaniego.

Let’s first acknowledge that while Ruiz wasn’t behind the camera, he chose these photos: sixteen images of human tissue and orifices that represent only a slice of the pigmentation spectrum of skin. Blending the traditional roles of artist and curator, Ruiz printed the photos from the original slides at a scale that makes them larger than life. He mounted them traditionally, and arranged them in an equally-spaced line along the white walls. He was also selective in revealing information about the origins of the “found photographs.”

In the book Art Power, Boris Groys writes “every exhibition tells a story, by directing the viewer through the exhibition in a particular order; the exhibition space is always a narrative space.” [3] Agreeing with Groys, I find that these images invite, if not coerce, us to construct a narrative about the people whose flesh we are looking at. Our perception of the work is influenced by the environment and how we feel in the space, and vice versa. In an act of self-reflection, to analyze the narrative we subconsciously construct as well as how we relate to the images and how we respond to the space is quite revealing. When you visit the exhibition, I encourage you to ask yourself: Do I connect with these images? What am I curious about? What am I confused by? What stories do I see? How does my body feel in this space?

Photographs of a person with a prosthetic eye and a person with a scar on their chin in Estevan Ruiz’s exhibition TISSUES. Image by Carissa Samaniego.

Considering these questions helped me to understand my experience of the photos. While I do not “see myself” reflected in these images, they do feel—in a weird way—familiar. In fact, I was able to find a memory in them. Looking at the only image containing two eyes, I realized the left one is a prosthetic. This brought me back to playing capture the flag or ghost in the graveyard at night in my neighborhood. One friend, whose name I can no longer recall, would often take out his glass eye and shove it in front of my face to tease me while we crouched behind bushes or hid underneath decks. At that time, it irritated me. Now, I find the memory nostalgic and even a bit charming.

A close-up photograph of an eye in Estevan Ruiz’s exhibition TISSUES. Image by Carissa Samaniego.

But here’s the thing we have to remember: the way I relate to these images, my identification with the snapshots, and the memory they conjured, is a testament to my own life experience. I am a millennial who grew up in small town America. I have a white mother and a brown father. I studied art and finished graduate school. I have reliable access to health care and have sent pictures of rashes to my dermatologist for tele-health consultations. Members of my family have had moles and skin tags removed, my neighbor had her eyelids lifted last year, and several friends of mine have opted for permanent makeup. I’ve compared prices of micro-blading for my thinning eyebrows. I am capable of blending into white, urban, hipster spaces. My points of reference and my comfort level in the space are due in part to the nature of my own skin. This forced me to think about the fact that in our culture, the skin we’re in privileges or disempowers us discriminately. This is, as I see it, the power of the exhibition.

Carissa Samaniego is an interdisciplinary visual artist and writer based in Colorado. Her work and research focus on the intersection of place, knowledge systems, and identity. This focus is based on her own experience growing up in between a reserved community on the Minnesota prairie and a twelve-generation Nuevomexicano family in the U.S./MEX borderlands.

[1] Sean J. Patrick Carney, “DIY vs. Beast Mode Capitalism,” Art in America, January 26, 2021: https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/meow-wolf-denver-expansion-diy-art-scene-1234582197.

[2] From the gallery’s website: http://www.ddaatteelliinnee.com/.

[3] Boris Groys, Art Power (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2013), p. 43.