(Faces)
2008 by Jensen
Found 09/15, Savers (North Loop and Burnet)

It is difficult to decide which of these two entities is the more horrifying. Certainly the strange secondary eye on the female subject is alarming. It may be a physical aberration, a strange mutation throwing the entire image into the world of the “weird tale,” or a suggestion of motion, of a face caught in transition between an arched expression and a mocking smile, simultaneously showing both.

While more subtle, the male face is also unsettling in its own way, a massive foreshortening of the near glasses lens and eye distorting the subject like a carnival mirror or a trick camera lens, and rendering the right side of his face lifeless, as if he had lost the functioning of that side of his face.

The suggestion has been thrown around that the artist Jensen is a retired carnival caricaturist who has made an unfortunate attempt at creating legitimate art. We are conducting an intensive search of the local thrift galleries for more examples of this artist’s work, in the hopes of finding the exact demarcation between caricature and grotesque.