Costa Rican artist José Rosales’ practice is concerned with the body and how it relates to and interacts with salvaged images and forces of biopower. Rosales's intertextual references span the official and unofficial and the formal and informal, from museum displays to amateur gay pornography to government documents. The artist notes that working with such texts makes him appreciate their earnestness, individuality and relationship to ostracised and excluded sectors of society. Rosales' recent work is interested in representations of the idealised or ‘conventional’ body in medical and scientific illustrations, how certain bodies can be characterised as divergent from the norm, and how bio powers seek to normalise and neutralise these perceived differences.

Jose Rosales