E7 painters from troubled historical eras, incorporating the works of Francis Bacon in After (2013; figure 2), and Egon Schiele in Bordermine (2020; figure 3). In After, Platnic undertakes performative video reconstructions of Bacon’s triptychs, constructing threedimensional emulations of Bacon’s distorted spaces, in which he and other performers don the painted skins of Bacon’s troubled protagonists. By casting himself in the role of several Bacon figures, Platnic probes the horror of these figures’ disfigurement and loss of human form. And yet, he returns their capacity to move and breathe. While remaining disfigured and vulnerable, Platnic’s re-embodied Bacon figures seem to gain back their humanity. Similarly, in Bordermine, he and his performers impersonate Schiele’s anxious protagonists in visually haunting and technically ambitious videos. The title Bordermine itself complicates notions of selfhood, as the artist seeks to define his borders within another artist’s skin. This practice of "growing a second skin" of painting, while invoking modern art at its most troubled and anxious, speaks to the loss of humanity that Platnic perceives in the current encounter between human subjects and technology. In 2023, Platnic turned to the exploration of AI-driven moving-image production Figure 1. Michel Platnic, Self Portrait, 2009. Lambda print.
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