Anthony Aziz (b. Fitchburg, Massachusetts, USA) and Samuel Cucher (b. 1958, Lima, Peru/grew up in Caracas, Venezuela) are visual artists working together as a collaborative team since meeting in graduate school in 1990 at the San Francisco Art Institute. They are pioneers in the field of digital imaging and post-photography with projects exhibited at numerous venues including the 1995 Venice Biennale, the LA County Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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Anthony Aziz received his BA from Boston College in 1983 and then went on to earn his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1990. Sammy Cucher received his BFA from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1983 and then earned his MFA from SFAI in 1992. They live and work together in Brooklyn, NY and are both members of the faculty at Parsons The New School for Design.
Aziz + Cucher have worked in many media including digital photography, video installation, sculpture, and textiles. They were among the first to use Adobe Photoshop in the context of fine art photography. The resulting series of images (1992–2002) can be seen as a commentary and reflection on the relationship between the human body and the technological forces that shape our society. In later projects (2003–2006), which grew to include video installation, their concerns shifted towards the way that our perception of nature and the landscape had been augmented and modified by technological mediation. Beginning in 2006, Aziz + Cucher embarked on the creation of a new body of work that looks at the landscape from a decidedly more historical and political perspective stemming from their own family connections to the middle east.
This is probably Aziz + Cucher’s most widely known work which consists of large digitally manipulated portraits in which the orifices—eyes, mouth and nostrils—have been covered by a layer of skin. The intention was to suggest an evolutionary change signifying the loss of individuality in the face of advancing technology and the progressive disappearance of face-to-face, direct interaction.
These are monumental images of architectural spaces seemingly constructed out of human skin. Created originally to metaphorically reflect the rapid proliferation of technological communications, these images have a haunting, lyrical quality which embodies the dichotomy between interior and exterior that will come to characterize their work subsequently.
The central piece in this series is a 4-channel video installation commissioned by the Festival Villette Numerique in Paris in 2004. The series is characterized by a shift in visual language from the human body to representing a landscape in which diverse forms are superimposed, becoming intertwined, and slowly emerging from an intensive colored flurry. Each individual shape seems in constant flux, becoming distinguished by a shift in tone, orientation, or size of its colored texture. The work in this series explores ideas of a digital consciousness that allows for the simultaneous perception of multiple perspectives and scales, as well as for the blurring of the distinctions between the body and its environment.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Caracas-New York
C-Collection Switzerland, Lugano
Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Miami
Musee de l'Elysee, Laussane, Switzerland
MUSAC, Museum of Contemporary Art, Leon, Spain
Maison Europeene de la Photographie, Paris
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
Collection Banque et Caisse d'Epargne de l'Etat, Luxembourg
Fond National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago
Colección D.O.P., Paris, France
National Gallery of Australia
Denver Museum of Art, Denver
Fond Regional d’Art Contemporain, Auvergne, France
Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne
Sammlung Berger Foundation, Amorbach, Germany
Lutz Teutloff, Bielefeld, Germany
Galeria de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela
Fundación D.O.P., Caracas, Venezuela
Ruttenberg Foundation, Chicago
Rene and Veronica di Rosa Foundation, Napa, CA
Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas, Venezuela
Colección Mercantil, Caracas, Venezuela