- Elephant skin made from tin foil
- A bird skeleton made from fingernail clippings
- A signature generating school chair

Tim Hawkinson looks at things a little differently from you and me. He seems to be interested in the human perception of life, and how we never really can separate reality from our perception of it. Because of this, he tends to put alot of himself in his work...literally. You will see Hawkinson's body inflated, reflected, animated and used as the actual raw material in many of his pieces. He has taken the concept of self-portrait to a wildly interesting place.

Take for example "Graph" which looks like someone took a spyrograph toy and got a little carried away. It's only after you realize that "graph" stands for autograph, and the design was made from impressions of the artist's own skin, that you appreciate the complexity of the work. And that skin is replicated in an oversized sculpture of the artist's finger across the room. Hawkinson, like many other artists, wants the viewer to experience the process, as well as the final product.

In "Bird" the artist created a perfect, two-inch tall skeleton of a hummingbird from his own fingernail clippings, revealing his attention to details in life as well as his obsession with it. In other works, Hawkinson reduces himself to pure actions, as in "Signature" which repeatedly signs the artist’s own name. Fashioned from a classroom chair, the machine seems to be learning, just as the artist once did. You see the mechanisms grinding and whirling away as each signature is generated. Hawkinson wants you to see what's going on, and in doing so get a closer look at what was going through his mind in the process. Awesome.

Tim Hawkinson at the Whitney Museum through May 29.