Doug and Mike Starn

(Americans, b. 1961)

Double Rembrandt with Steps, 1987/1991

Manipulations of technique and form mark Mike and Doug Starn’s photo-based mixed-media art. Double Rembrandt with Steps is one of their variations on a Rembrandt portrait presumably of the painter’s father. In concept and materials – plywood, nails, transparency film, plexiglass, and wood molding – this piece refers to the Starns’ own father, a man interested in architecture and woodworking, as well as to their status as twins. It is also typical of their efforts to “relax” photography include using scotch tape to create their collaged work and pushpins to attach it to gallery walls. Double Rembrandt with Steps delicately transforms the art historical information that the Starns appropriate and salute.

Identical twin brothers Doug and Mike Starn were born in New Jersey in 1961. At the age of thirteen they began exploring photography, and eventually attended The School of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFAs, 1985). In 1988 the Starn twins exhibited their work in major solo shows in New York, and their first survey exhibition traveled to museums in Chicago, San Francisco, Hartford, and Honolulu. Today their work is widely exhibited throughout the world, and represented in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others.

Starn, Doug and Mike. Doug and Mike Starn: The Christ Series: November 20, 1987-January 31, 1988. Sarasota, Fla.: John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 1987.

Starn, Mike and Doug. Starn Twins. New York : Stux, 1988.

Starn, Doug and Mike. The Starn Twins: Museum of Contemporary Art, October 29 through December 4, 1988. Chicago, Ill.: The Museum, 1988.

Starn, Doug and Mike. Starn Twins, New Works: November 7-30, 1989. Tokyo: Akira Ikeda Gallery, 1989.

Grundberg, Andy and Mike and Doug Starn. Mike and Doug Starn. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990.

Starn, Doug and Mike, and Joseph Masheck. Doug & Mike Starn: [exhibition] April 25-May 26, 1990. New York : Stux Gallery, 1990.

Starn, Mike and Doug, et al. Multiples: December 5, 1991-January 11, 1992, Pace/McGill Gallery. New York: Pace/MacGill Gallery, 1991.

Starn, Mike and Doug. Mike and Doug Starn: Sun Studies. Gambier, Ohio: Olin Gallery, Kenyon College, 1994.

Starn, Doug and Mike. Attracted to Light. New York: London: PowerHouse; Turnaround, 2004.