Maybe you can be one of us

Swiss artist Daniele Buetti is notorious for his defaced photographs of supermodels, which feature scars, tattoos and disenchanted fragments of text. Buetti has been questioning the socially determined constructs of beauty and the commodification of sexuality and glamour since the 1980s. His altered photographs--large-scale C-prints on aluminum or light-boxes--have messages like "How much is my body worth?" and "What shall I hope for?" scrawled across them in electric colors. Buetti also often energetically scratches out or draws over portions of the image in a manner that recalls the destructive doodling of a truculent adolescent. Maybe You Can Be One of Us focuses on Buetti's recent drawings, videos, sculptures and installations. In these newer pieces, the fashion models give way to enigmatic illustrative symbols, such as two disembodied hands conjuring a puff of smoke. This publication accompanies an exhibition of new work at the Swiss Institute for Contemporary Art in New York.