-2009-[Installation-View]-0999-WEB.jpg "Recto-Verso (day & night) and Recto-Verso (dawn & dusk)")
--[0867]-WEB.jpg "Recto-Verso (day & night) and Recto-Verso (dawn & dusk)")
-2009-[Installation-View]-0055-WEB.jpg "Recto-Verso (day & night) and Recto-Verso (dawn & dusk)")
-2009-[0893]-WEB.jpg "Recto-Verso (day & night) and Recto-Verso (dawn & dusk)")
Tommy Grace
Recto-Verso (day & night) and Recto-Verso (dawn & dusk)
Ingleby Gallery published this pair of double-sided prints as part of Tommy Grace’s 2009 solo exhibition Dummy. The prints are sold as a pair and each print is displayed in a bespoke standing frame.
The four sculptures sitting atop the sarcophagi of the Medici Chapel – Day & Night, Dawn & Dusk – are some of Michelangelo’s most puzzling and enigmatic works. Using found photographs of the roughly hewn, unseen backs of each figure, Grace has printed each coupling in vivid contrasting colours onto both sides of a sheet of lightweight paper.
Seen from either side, one figure merges with the other as light passes through the translucent paper, creating a beguilingly beautiful riddle. Though clearly allegories for the transience of life and the cycle from birth to death, no one has ever been able to fully decipher the meanings Michelangelo embedded within these four melancholy statues, and with these new prints, Grace adds another layer of mystery, presenting these momento mori in a vibrant new form.