MARWENCOL

Marwencol tells the story of Mark Hogancamp, an early-middle-aged resident of a small New York town who was almost beaten to death ten years ago. After extensive rehabilitation, Hogancamp returned to his home a different person, with only scattered memories of his identity. To cope, he began constructing Marwencol, a made-up 1/6thscale World War II-era Belgian town, populated by action figures and Barbie dolls, in his backyard. The work is astonishing – everything from the smallest props to the textures of the buildings and the objects are perfect. Hogancamp enacts complex miniature war dramas of violence, love and betrayal, stories that mirror his life in eerie ways, with himself and his real-life friends as characters. He photographs them as they develop, and his pictures are truly strange and beautiful – gorgeously composed, with a real artist’s eye. Somehow, alone in his little New York town, he’s been producing a fascinating body of art that is inexorably tangled up in his shattered life. (Mark Slutsky)