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- 38 Huguenot Street
- Franschhoek, Western Cape
- 7690
- SOUTH AFRICA
- +021 876 4280
- art@artintheyard.co.za
PUBLIC PROFILE
Mar
18
Sat
-
Art in the Yard presents solo exhibition Solo by Chris Denovan, "ARTIFICIAL Beasts"
Starts 2017/03/18 at 3:00 AM CAT
Ends 2017/04/11 at 11:00 AM CAT
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Added by Carmen Arendse
@ Art in the Yard FranschhoekThe exhibition will showcase Chris’s new body of work an expoloration of portraiture as well as to comment on the artistic act of portrait-making itself and what that means in a contemporary world full of digital self-identification
The initial inspiration was to produce composite portraits from images sourced from the web. Chris explains ‘I collage different facial pieces from different places, not just one whole face that is taken directly. The Beasts in Artificial beasts is in a way referring to me creating these Frankenstein -esque beautiful monsters. My desire is to create life or a portrait form nothing. Chris’s aim is to create fictional identities and inject "life" into them; giving them "personalities" by choice of clothing, accessories, expression and thus exploring notions around the idea of the portrait. What elements are needed and what works when absent. In order to name them, he used a web-based random name generator that enhances their fictional existence, but at the same time turns them into personal entities.
Chris’s aesthetic inspiration of pre-Modern portraiture sets us with in a timeline and highlights strongly the way in which our perception of portraiture has changed. For 100 years ago having you portrait painted or photographed was a rarity something quite distinct now with the selfie and personal profile pictures the portrait is mundane. The artificial beast sets out to highlight the product of such overuse but also return a little charm back to our perception of portraiture.