Prima Facie
Opening Reception: Sunday January 25th, 5-9pm
Exhibit will run from January 4th - February 28th
Prima Facie
Following up from her Paradiso series, Prima Facie leads the viewer from a hazy and allusive face into a more fully-rendered and clearly-perceptible one. The faces in this series start emerging from their backgrounds and become more real, leading to a clear and distinct separation from their backgrounds before disappearing back into them again, like the phases/faces of the moon. There is a process of distinction of isolation and differentiation that makes the figures their own stand-alone entities in relation to their backgrounds. This allows viewers to focus on either the figure or the ground but never quite both at the same time.
The faces, while fully rendered, are still very much false and mask-like, where it almost feels as if one can pluck them right off of the painting. Indeed, this fuller, more hyper-realist rendering often prevents people from realizing that the painting and the figures/grounds represented therein are nothing but illusions created by the skillful manipulation of paint; almost to the point where it becomes difficult to identify just how the figure was produced its history, it process, and the artists painting technique. And this is an apt metaphor for the various egos we come across every day.
Oftentimes we engage and experience the world from a firm position for fear that we will lose control of ourselves that we will lose ourselves and, with that, our physical and personal integrity. But what are we holding onto when we fight to maintain such integrity? What does it mean to be able to fully Let Go: to fully immerse oneself within an experience and to become one with it? How can we get to a point where we can let ourselves go to let go of our ego and to just be one with the world/the universe and to experience it fully?
Prima Facie explores the beauty and comfort that is that immersion process.
