John Gelsthorp

Teoman Irmak

’84 nudes #1′ -2002

“Each of the sibling images appears unique. There seems to be an underlying principle at work, something almost magical.”

I used the same image reproduced many times; computers are good at repetitive tasks, to initially construct the first work ‘One Million Nudes’.
In retrospect this imposed limitation turned out to be very interesting. The very fact that every single image in the whole series is derived from this one original image of a figure suggests that the process of reproduction/regeneration/etc makes as important a contribution as the original figure.
Distortions, errors or mutations introduced have spawned radically different results.

Why one million nudes?
Because that is what I set out to do, originally. I couldn’t imagine what it would look like. At first the task seemed near impossible. That is what really got my attention. I liked the challenge.
I figured one way would be to print images of 100,000 figures, A0 size, ten different ways. That would be exactly one million.

The actual figures are very small. It looks like a carpet.
Yes they are about 2 mm tall. Maybe they could be a bit bigger. However, the final images were not very interesting. I must admit I was a little disappointed at first.

You really need to look very closely at the works to see what they are.
I agree. But I discovered something. A crowd is not as entertaining as individuals or a small group. Obvious in hindsight. But the process had fascinated