Cristiano Lenhardt is another conceptual artist whose artworks at first seem unconscionable; his paintings, sculptures and videos delve into the most bizarre, absurd and comical scenes, yet these possess a surprisingly sublime element upon closer reflection, often times showing us how bizarre and comical certain facets of our life are in return.
In Retratante & Retratado (2007), 2 human beings, dressed in different color body suits which mask their identities, as well as their sexuality, find each other in a natural environment, fall in love, experience various amounts of bliss in the process and eventually die, disappearing back into the soil. Using crude analog stop-motion animation techniques similar to the 1950’s children’s TV show ‘Gumby’, where inanimate objects are brought to life and personified into a character, here the people are dehumanized and turned into plastic objects, but are doing the most humanly enjoyable things, like fall in love. Could ‘Gumby’ be considered a work of art?
