Isabelle Frances McGuire

Through kitbashing and the hacking of readymades, an artist explores what digital visual culture might look like in material form

- Alexandra Drexelius

Chicago-based artist Isabelle Frances McGuire reworks readymade objects to examine the ways in which the body itself is worked on, influenced and displaced by technology. Yes, as that implies, the real-life body is no longer the primary reference for recognising and modelling human form; instead, the contemporary experience of the body – the way it looks, moves and behaves – is mediated, in the developed world, by screen culture. Appropriating both recognisable and esoteric content – from religious icons and minor videogame characters to prehistoric monuments and high-tech weapons – McGuire’s sculptures are supplemented by motors, sensors and electronics as a physical stand-in for digitally circulated forms. Models of ships and bombs that have been 3D-printed dangle limply from the restrictive knots of lightbulb cords; recycled animatronics convulse repetitively like malfunctioning machines; and dolls and mannequins stand paralysed, overburdened by the heft of their cultural references. Deftly consolidating an ever-widening stream of open-source and secondhand content, McGuire’s work realises a profound sense of consternation as bodily agency for many is displaced through increasingly dispersed and advanced technological means.

The works assembled for McGuire’s recent solo exhibition