In Jens Ullrich’s wonderful series Pilots, which we recently spotted over at Junk Culture, the Düsseldorf and Berlin-based artist combines photographs of great sports moments plucked from the newspapers, which images of classical sculptures. Some of the collages remind us of the excellence of the athletic body — the chiseled stone abs a reflection of their hard-won fleshy counterparts — and some seem stranger than this, a sort of halting in midair, a Medusa effect. As the artist explains, “Because I love figurative sculpture, I forced them into symbolic reparations, by hustling their divided bodies into new action and by violating their authorship, so that free spirit, which is known to fly like a dove, can finally take possession of them.” Click through to see some of our favorites from Pilots, and then be sure to head here see more images from the series.
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich
Image credit: Jens Ullrich