Valérie Rouyer - Still Life
Case #3
exhibition / 22 jul 23 aug 2009
With the series Still Life by Valérie Rouyer Noorderlicht PhotoLab focuses on the surrealistic reality of the mutable body. Rouyer photographed interventions by plastic surgeons in an uncompromising manner. The gory scenes refer rather to the crude work in an abattoir than to the painless and precise interventions that are presented to us by the plastic surgery industry.
It is obvious that Still Life can be regarded as an indictment of the obsessive body cult of modern times. Rouyer's harsh operation photography then primarily aims at a shock effect in order to drive home to the viewer the essential violence that is hidden behind 'innocent' body corrections.
Those who look at it longer can also interpret Still Life as a more intelligent answer to the rose-coloured plastic-fantastic world of the plastic surgery industry, in which the vulnerability of the human body is chiefly forgotten and exchanged for a technological approach. In that perspective the title of the series - Still Life - takes on an extra layer of meaning: fortunately the body still lives on under all the plastic styling, and it is still made of flesh and blood.
The skin is slimmed down by means of liposuction of the subcutaneous adipose tissue and can then rather simply be separated from the lower layer, the SMAS (Superficial Muscular Aponeurotic System).
By means of lifts in the desired direction and sutures this whole system can placed under tension, after which the skin is draped over this tight foundation and remodelled. The result of the intervention is a restoration of the contours of the face, and particularly of the the zygomatic arch, the jaw line and the oval of the face, and the near if not total disappearance of the nose-lip fold and hamster cheeks. If necessary the floor of the mouth can also be flattened.
(description of treatment at an institution for plastic surgery)
