"…A group of drawings titled "Self Portrait as a Man" stems from the Artist's question: "If charged with the task of constructing a Golem, at what point would you decide it's sex, perfected?"

In these images, Piene's slippery, energized lines ravels into bodies whose fleshly incarnations maintain an openness, their male and female components unfurling through layers, hovering at one point in an ongoing state of flux. In contrast, the distribution of energy in the full throttle pedendathon of her black and white self-portrait video is dramatically polarized by a close up of the artist's crotch. However, the booming manly voice gravely intoning her name is also her own. Here, as elsewhere, male and female are unmasked as simplistic tropes, and in their collision an unrest occurs, whereby beauty and delicacy come roaring up out of the dark salt earth." "Her second "Self Portrait" shows Piene lifted up to the light by dozens of guys at a Heavy Metal gig; she is both a victorious striker held aloft by her teammates and a queen bee surrounded by suitors. Compare the ambiguous erotic dynamics played out here to the drawings of the Dwarf series, where Piene combined her body with that of a male Dwarf. The synthesis of these physical extremes - the elegance and softness of a young woman's body - the hardness and condensed strength of the Dwarfs’ - are embodied in a group of unlikely beings that exhibit a tender disjointedness - like two ghosts manifesting in the same space. The Artist likens these figures to a medieval bestiary where the human, not the animal, is documented in all its unfamiliarity. It is a place where the misunderstood and shrouded aspects of existence rise to the surface to both haunt and reign."

— Excerpt from Press Release, "Chloe Piene, November 17th - December 18th, 2004"