Still Life with Pig

Artist Anthony Goicolea American, born 1971

Date2005

MediumChromogenic print, mounted on aluminum and laminated

Dimensions40 x 60 in. (101.6 x 152.4 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LineGift of Allen G. Thomas Jr.

Object number2006.19

On View

Not on view

Label Text
Anthony Goicolea’s large-format color photographs portray an imaginary and fantastic world completely fabricated by the artist. Focusing on childhood, adolescence, and the transition to adulthood, his photographs present mysterious scenes open to numerous interpretations. Still Life with Pig is from a series titled Sheltered Life and depicts two boys sleeping in a makeshift shelter of cardboard boxes and tree limbs, with the remnants of an extravagant feast spilling out across the ground in front of them. This vividly hued scene looks as if it were lifted from a seventeenth-century baroque painting.

Goicolea describes Sheltered Life as a series of “digitally constructed photographs that depicts fairy tale-like, timeless places inhabited by contemporary characters . . . Their living arrangements and concealed identities cement their status as outcasts or refugees from society . . . Their playfulness undermines the sort of desperate haphazard construction and deeper desire to migrate or live on the outside of communities.”
[L. Dougherty, 2010]ProvenanceCreated New York, 2005; collection of the artist; [Postmasters Gallery, New York]; Allen G. Thomas Jr., Wilson, NC, 2005; given to NCMA, 2006.
Published ReferencesLinda Dougherty and Kinsey Katchka, "The Big Picture," Preview: The Magazine of the North Carolina Museum of Art (July/August 2007), mentioned and illus. (color detail) 8.

Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh and Savannah: North Carolina Museum of Art and Telfair Museums, 2011), briefly discussed and illus. (color) 10, illus. (color) pl. 20 and back cover, listed and illus. (color) 118.
Exhibition HistoryNew York, NY, Postmasters Gallery, "Anthony Goicolea: Sheltered Life," April 9-May 7, 2005.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The Big Picture," March 18-September 2, 2007.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea," April 17-July 24, 2011; Savannah, GA, Telfair Museums: Jepson Center, September 2, 2011-January 8, 2012; Louisville, KY, 21c Museum, January 27-July 15, 2012.
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