killing denouement

“The city has a face, the country has a soul.”

I don’t know who said that, but it just might be true. And these days, it’s definitely no exaggeration to say that the walls have ears. Why not eyes, mouths, noses and other facial accroutements too? Luckily, JR obliges, with some of the sickest large scale urban work I’ve seen in a long time [via Wooster].

Although I love the interplay of the kid image above, I think it works best with pictures of older men, replete with wrinkles, sunspotted skin and frown and laughter lines – especially when contorted into expressions of dismay and semi-atrophied disarray. Strangely enough his faces seem to be primarily male, and at that, old and white to boot. I’m reminded of John Baldessari’s amazing Six Colorful Gags in which you can see that all types of ‘gags’ kind of look the same in the end.

Perhaps best of all, like all people’s faces they too must be weathered or faded away; taken down and put on a bedside table, or maybe wiped away with a spot of cold cream or botox. (If only to get immediately zapped and trapped into made-for-TV movies).