mask portrait #2

Comment

Comment by seymour bergman on November 29, 2011 at 11:40pm

yes i am familiar with his work, a really good artist. there are quite a few artists that felt they had to comment on our brutality in hopes of awakening people as to how horrendous we can act. seymour

Comment by Resident Curator on November 29, 2011 at 8:22pm

Thank you so much for responding and offering insight into your work.  I was a little fearful you might have found my comments pessimistic, but now I see the work is even darker than I had imagined.  Are you by any chance familiar with the work of Mauricio Lasansky?  I remember he created very powerful drawings dehumanizing the Nazis in monsterous masks/helmets.  His pieces were also disturbing but darkly beautiful.

Comment by seymour bergman on November 29, 2011 at 12:08am

hi, these portraits were a part of a show depicting witnesses to the kind of horror committed during war and the attempted slaughter of a whole people by the nazis during the second world war and all subsequent wars and genocides. they are supposed to express horror except for one which shows a perpetrator grinning with the background full of dead bodies. so yes you are right there is something very dark and macabre being expressed. thank you for your comments. seymour

Comment by Resident Curator on November 28, 2011 at 9:00pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

 

I keep coming back to look at these works, but I’m still in doubt as to how to interpret them!  There is a macabre quality to the distorted mask- the colors and textures suggest a melting face, or ghoulish jack-o-lantern.  But there is also an intricate and restrictive background pattern that is delicate- and quite pretty.  The contrast is discordant and visually arresting.  Part of the visual contrast may come from mixed media and processes, but there is also an extraordinary use of space.  The dark, black ink sections seem to move through the piece, and unite the opposing aesthetic sensibilities.  I see a confidence and sophistication in your work that marries a Pop-art graphic quality with decidedly darker, startling subject matter. Some of the other mask portraits in the series have a slightly more comic mood, but they still conceal something foreboding under their smiling facades.