Photo Booth Mask by Mark Pernice

“Photo Booth Mask” is an actual mask rendered from a distorted image using Apple’s photo booth application; that he documents himself wearing the mask adds to the disembodied simulacra. The project may point to the absurd narcissism of the affected expressions usually made with the distortion effects, a kind of reverse aesthetic of trying to look grotesque. One is reminded of Francis Bacon, who fucked with faces way back; true, the camera changed painting, and now it changes sculpture, and with the latter, there’s an eerie leap from what ought to be two-dimensional to an actualized object, a transgression of mimesis.