facial fragments

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on December 22, 2013 at 4:55pm

Curator’s Comments: 

Facial Fragments is a compelling and stimulating work in its brilliant color saturation and gestural expression.  I like the flowing line work up against the more detail oriented and representational facial features.  This drawing, and others related in the series appear to emerge from the self portrait with the blue plastic bag.  While there are obviously macabre associations with suffocation or the cancellation of personal identity, the resulting evolutionary works branch further and appear to be about the stretching of space over and around the face. The openness of the hatched lines ultimately forms a loose web from which the high chroma red reemerges, and injects a sensation of heightened alertness into the expression.  I also like that the verticality of the picture plane elongates the animated tangle of lines, as if fashioning a thought bubble over the abstracted head.  Page from Town & Country contains more dramatic evidence of this facial manipulation and distortion; but the origins of the image remain more evident. I don’t know that I need to see the surrounding hazy objects within the space, unless you feel the magazine page is part of a hybrid still life/portrait.  This in itself is an interesting approach, as the face could be embedded within a narrative context, or allow for more layered formal relationships.  Either way I hope to see more of your work on the site.