In Steve Budington’s Homunculus, human bodies unravel, fly apart, and merge with prosthetic technology. Budington’s new body of work takes as its point of departure the neuroscientific concept of the “cortical homunculus”: a remapped image of the human form that scales body parts in relation to the degree of sensory input present in each area. In a radical redefinition of figurative painting, Budington’s imagery emphasizes embodied experience: the proliferation, or complete absence, of sensory organs; Gore-Tex in exchange for skin; and male and female genitals spliced onto the same body. From iPods to cosmetic surgery, artificial hearts and neuroplastic implants, our culture increasingly extends and enhances the physical body. Budington explores and questions how this next step in our physical evolution will transform our sense of self and our perception of the environment we inhabit.
Steve Budington lives in Burlington and is a professor of painting at the University of Vermont.
