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settembre 22, 2016 - Porsche

Living portraits

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

The composition of person and background creates the portrait. In doing so, #alexameade challenges our customary modes of perception—not to mention the self-image of her models. The drive to the studio winds through the asphalt jungle of #losangeles, past graffiti-covered walls (fascinating tableaux interspersed with meaningless tags), cafés, and all manner of everyday life.

Echo Park is a trendy neighborhood favored by artists, photographers, and musicians. It is an older district, slightly bohemian and still intact, not yet taken over by business interests. Right off Alvarado Street the vegetation becomes denser, with single-family houses perched along the steep roads. Every once in a while, a car simply cannot make it up the inclines. Alexa Meade—auburn-haired, freckled, and barefoot—leads us up a rainbow-painted flight of stairs to her home.

She paints skin on skin, lips on lips, eyelids on eyelids

In the living room, which also serves as Meade’s bedroom and studio, she creates exceptional works of art. You could call them portraits, but they are also performances. Meade covers #people with acrylic paint until they themselves look like portraits. She paints skin on skin, lips on lips, eyelids on eyelids, until viewers no longer perceive the figures as three-dimensional entities but instead as two-dimensional surfaces. Over the course of about six hours, she reduces her subjects to planes. Two-dimensionality becomes an art form in an age of three-dimensional revolutions. Yet the subjects of her art become more vibrant, more radiant. She positions her models in front of pre-existing colorful backgrounds. She then takes her paint-smeared Canon or her surprisingly unmarked smartphone and proceeds to document these transient works of art in the form of photographs. Only the unpainted hair and eyes reveal the fact that the images are not traditional paintings.