VALDOSTA, Ga. — We can’t show you the entire drawings but audiences can see the drawings in full at the latest exhibit coming to the Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery at Valdosta State University.

It provides an anatomical map where the aging human body might be heading.

“This Acceptable Body: Large Scale Drawings on Aging and Nudism” is a collection of nude drawings based on subjects who are 60 and older.

The works are by Texas artist Ghislaine Fremaux and the exhibit opens Monday, Sept. 17, in the VSU Fine Arts Building gallery.

“This exhibition of very large – average size: nine feet – figurative drawings address the aging body and the practice of nudism,” said Julie Bowland, VSU gallery director. “Each drawing portrays a living person, of age 60 or older, who is a resident in a nudist community in southern Texas. 

“The work – which is the culmination of an interdisciplinary project between an artist and social scientist/gerontologist – intends to illuminate the often-invisible aging body and its relationship to problems of the gaze, beauty, shame, health and death and dying.”

Fremaux works in vivid colors with kinetic strokes. Given the subject matter and her vital style, the works are bold even reproduced at a smaller scale. But add the larger-than-life size of the full-body portraits, they can be staggering.

Fremaux hides no details.

She does not illustrate an idealized version of the aging body. She captures folds of fat, sagging skin, wrinkles, drooping organs.  

Each pastel work is glazed in epoxy resin to add the illusion of clammy, sweaty flesh to the drawings.

“The aging body is largely invisible in American culture, renounced by putative models of beauty so essentially reliant upon trappings of ability and youth,” Fremaux said in an artistic statement. “Consumer culture’s few meters of bodily value — beauty, athleticism, work/labor and sexual viability — cannot fathom the elderly body, and dismiss it as immaterial and strangely unreckonable.” 

Bowland said the series is the result of “an interdisciplinary project examining the practice of social nudism among senior citizens,” conceived and conducted by Fremaux with Dr. Jean Pearson Scott, a gerontologist/social scientist. 

“I attempt to evoke that very living body,” Fremaux said. “In amplified color and scale, at heights of seven to 10 feet, the invisible body of the aging person is made patently visible.”

GALLERY

Valdosta State University Department of Art & Design presents artist Ghislaine Fremaux’s “This Acceptable Body: Large Scale Drawings on Aging and Nudism.”

Where: Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery, VSU Fine Arts Building, corner of Oak and Brookwood.

Reception: A free, public reception is scheduled for 6-7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 17.

Run dates: Exhibit runs Sept. 17 through Oct. 5.

Closing Pizza Reception with artist’s talk scheduled for noon Friday, Oct. 5, in the gallery.

Gallery Hours: 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday.

Admission: Free.

NOTE: The show may not be suitable for younger viewers.

More information: Contact Julie Bowland, Gallery Director, (229) 333-5835, jabowlan@valdosta.edu.