Everyone wants a closer look.
A vintage television stands at the center of a small, weathered interior. Above it, a pale, elongated face tilts between dark, spindly hands. From the edges of the scene, more hands reach inward: suspended fingers curl toward the screen, while clusters of articulated limbs gather below. Black-and-white medical imagery flickers within the cabinet, giving this unusual assembly a shared point of attention.
The composition resembles a miniature theater arranged around an evening’s broadcast. Torn wall coverings hang in strips, exposing layers of pattern and creating a ragged frame around the gathering. The television occupies the place where we might expect a performer, its changing images supplying the action. Around it, the hands become an audience whose owners remain beyond our view.
Their gestures carry an ambiguous appetite. Some seem poised to touch or investigate; others suggest anticipation, surprise, or the pleasure of discovering something peculiar. Without visible bodies or readable expressions, each hand becomes unusually expressive. A bent wrist, an extended finger, or the space between two approaching limbs invites us to imagine the intention behind it.
Above this gathering, the pale face holds our attention. Its dark surrounding fingers echo the lighter hands entering from the margins, connecting the central figure to the fragmented bodies around it. The arrangement invites a question that runs through the Grimsbys’ world: who is observing, and who has become the object of observation? We study the strange inhabitants as they gather around images of bodies being examined.
For a household devoted to science and oddities, the broadcast belongs naturally among these peculiar forms. The medical imagery extends their fascination with what lies beneath a surface, while the surrounding handmade anatomy offers its own objects of study. Fingers, joints, faces, and instruments occupy the same visual world, bringing the imagined body into conversation with the physical one.
Karen Jerzyk made the characters by hand and filmed the work herself. The tactile presence of the sculpted forms remains central to the scene: their irregular proportions and carefully shaped gestures give the gathering a personality that emerges through physical detail. Within the series’ use of stop-motion animation and live-action costume performance, these constructions become participants in a private domestic ritual.
Scratches, flicker, and washes of brightness pass over the image, suggesting a broadcast that has survived imperfectly. Beneath those interruptions, the assembly remains intent on its television. We join them from the other side of the image, becoming one more spectator drawn toward something curious.
Part of *The Grimsbys*, a moving-image series by Karen Jerzyk exploring a peculiar household’s fondness for science, oddities, and the pleasures of looking closely.
