The artist uses the image of twins, human “echoes” to consider an idea that is circulated, digested, and later reformulated. Twins themselves are two bodies that mirror each other through genetics. In 1966, the artist Diane Arbus created a series of photographs of twins, an echo of that biological doubling, a frozen image of similarity. Fourteen years later, one of her black and white photographs inspired the American director, Stanley Kubrick to create the twins in his iconic horror movie, The Shining. American audiences in particular will recognize these twins even if they have never seen the film. The reason The Shining matters isn't simply because Kubrick referenced Arbus. It's because the image has been metabolized by millions of people. It has become detached from its source. It's now a cultural object in its own right. The artist knows the image of the Shining twins better than she knows the film. She knows them through reproductions, clips, Halloween costumes, stills, conversations and cultural memory rather than through the original source. Many people know the shower scene from Psycho or the Columbia Lady without really knowing the works from which they originated. These images have escaped their original contexts. They have become so thoroughly absorbed into collective memory that they circulate independently of their source. Yet, they are also images we don’t actually think about a great deal. Ogilvie’s paintings are yet another mutation. More importantly, they make visible the process by which images acquire cultural afterlives.

Part of the Obstinate Toy Soldiers series; also on view with Lady Liberty