* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Edie Nadelhaft is a sculptor and painter. She received an BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, in 1995.
Flesh & Biters is a series of paintings about skin as a barrier, a conduit, and a physical sensor. As the largest human organ, skin is quite literally how we interface with the world, says Nadelhaft.
Her paintings of skin are detailed, enlarged images of the surfaces of her own hands and mouth, and they range from close-up to extreme close-up. The work addresses issues of consciousness, personal identity, and physical and psychological presence, as well as the disappearance of touch in the increasingly digital landscape of modern life.
By examining these sensory hot spots, Edie is attempting to depict a state of pure consciousness that is uncomplicated by qualitative evaluation or mediated distance, and the strangeness of that experience. In paintings that swing from hyper-realism to near abstraction, she is exploring the vulnerability and vitality of the body, and the dual nature of what it means to exist only temporally.
Her work has been exhibited across the East Coast.