NASHVILLE, TN.- The Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art presents Anthony Goicolea, on view through July 31, 2005. The compositions in Anthony Goicolea’s photographs are grandly complex, visually tense and achingly beautiful. Painstakingly staged and artfully manipulated through digital technology, Goicolea’s photographs – which usually feature multiple images of himself -- are surreal glimpses into a world that is both threatening and alluring. When writing about his Fairy Tale series – which was heavily influenced by the Brothers Grimm – Goicolea describes his directive saying, “I investigate social constructions of age and gender and I allude to taboos of gender role play, adult and childhood fantasies, and conventional ideas of beauty and the grotesque.”

Goicolea’s influences include his childhood as a Cuban-American growing up in 1970s suburbs, art history and social taboos. According to the artist, ideas of self-image are an underlying current in his work as well, “Someone once asked me, ‘if you saw yourself sitting alone in a bar, would you ask yourself out?’ It’s that sort of questioning of self-love and self-hate that I want to explore.”

In addition to the Fairy Tale series, Goicolea has created thematic bodies of work that include Detention Series, Underwater Series, You and What Army Series and Landscape Series. To create these inquisitive images, Goicolea produces the sets, chooses the costumes and acts out the scenarios. The fabrication of the environment and photographing of the scene takes approximately one week. After this first step, Goicolea digitally manipulates the composition – a process that takes at least one month.

Anthony Goicolea, in his mid-thirties, has gained national recognition since receiving his MFA from Pratt Institute of Art with a major in sculpture and minor in photography. The artist spent his undergraduate years at the University of Georgia where he received a BFA in drawing and painting as well as a BA in art history with a minor in romance languages. Goicolea has mounted solo exhibitions around the world, including venues in New York, Milan, Los Angeles and Sydney. His photographs are in major collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.