The sterile cleanliness and the bold, theatrical lighting imbue these scenes with a sci-fi atmosphere, a crisp perfection that human flesh, no matter how firm and pert, can never live up to. They look like sites for ritual: altars, of a sort, to transformation.
In “Blue Laser Consultation Chair, New York City,’’ a high, pale chair bathes in the eerie blue light projected by the laser in front of it. The laser itself, a panel of light above and a slight distance away from the chair, gazes down like the eye of God. In “Orange Laser Machine, Washington DC,’’ an arced panel tilted slightly upward, glowing in near blackness, looks oracular.
Phillips sometimes focuses on other equipment: plastic liposuction vats with brightly colored lids, or a pretty little white and blue hexagonal box in “The Whisper Machine, Washington DC,’’ which turns out to be a smoke evacuation system (I guess all those lasers might generate smoke).
All the photos ultimately depict elaborate marketing packages: magical places and tools that will help you alter your body to more perfect specifications. Showing us these places free of patients and doctors, Phillips leaves us to wrestle with our own judgments about cosmetic surgery, and perhaps our own desire to sit in that laser consultation chair, and be saved.
Constructing femininity
There’s more frankly unsettling but slyly witty examination of our attitudes toward the flesh on view in “Image/Imaged/Imaginary,’’ a two-person show curated by Heidi Kayser and featuring work by Millee Tibbs and Lauren Kalman at Fort Point Arts Community Gallery. Like many good feminist artists, Kalman and Tibbs often begin with the body as a site of dissonance and turmoil.
