The cultural currency of portraiture has stood the test of time, as emerging social media platforms and sophisticated portable cameras, most accessible in the medium of cellular devices or tablets, have injected a sense of immediacy and spontaneity to the practice. The zeitgeist-defining selfie, in all its filtered and ubiquitous glory, has actively reshaped how individuals represent their image and likeness in pictorial form, by providing the most unskilled individual the ability to aesthetically alter and enhance their photographic creations. About Face, the current exhibition at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery, presents a series of paintings and photographs that contrast the extemporaneity and ordinariness of contemporary modes of portraiture. The exhibition effectively visualizes an era where capturing an individual in pictorial form required extensive and exhaustive sit-ins with an artist, or a photographer meticulously modifying a setting to create the ideal lighting for an image.
Sebastião Salgado, Brazil, 1981, gelatin silver print, Photograph by Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas Images. Image courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery
About Face offers a variety of artistic endeavors that creates a compellingly varied synthesis of modes of execution. The clarity and focus of Sebastião Salgado’s black-and-white photographs greatly contrasts John Hartman’s thick impasto and partial abstraction. Keita Morimoto’s “Green Girl” explicitly recalls the painterly naturalism of the Baroque, while Shelley Adler’s “Zoe one Evening” invokes a more expressive and less anatomically correct rendering of forms. Furthermore, a painting from Stephen Appleby Barr’s recent solo exhibition within the same gallery space effectively resurfaces under a newer context within this latest curatorial effort, enabling his idiosyncratic work to speak in a different perspective.
Keita Morimoto, Green Girl, 2015, oil on linen, 48 x 36 inches. Image courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery
Shelley Adler, Zoe one Evening, 2015, oil on canvas, 56 x 50 inches. Image courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery
A thoughtfully heterogeneous mix of media is displayed throughout the venue, from the transcendent oil and canvas of Charles Bierk’s paintings, to the more obsolete daguerreotype process of Chuck Close’s self-portrait series. Coupled alongside an eclectic range of subject matter, About Face showcases an artful mix of the quotidian and the surreal, the monumental and the modest. The viewer is encouraged to contemplate the various narratives presented throughout the gallery, as the diverse physiognomies offer a wealth of potential psychological states and perspectives. In the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein, “meaning is a physiognomy,” a statement About Face enlivens.
Charles Bierk, Taylor, 2015, oil on canvas, 70 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery
David Saric
*Exhibition information: January 7 – 30, 2016, Nicholas Metivier Gallery, 451 King Street West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Tue–Sat, 10 am–6 pm.