Beautiful Losers Project
Beautiful Losers is the product of research done within the walls of the Louvre... last August I spent nearly every day in the largest museum in the world drawing from Neoclassical and Romantic masterpieces by artists such as: Gros, David, Gericault, Delacroix, Ingres... etc. Most of these paintings (epic in scale) constitute for me, the most interesting visual juxtapositions in relation to historic portrayals of bravado and sexuality. Some illustrate celebratory mythic narratives, while others glorify particular instances of war and destruction; but all of these visual depictions had certain commonalities, they were highly didactic political tools.
Of course to a contemporary eye they may seem nostalgic and asthetcally pleasing with little else to offer, but by focussing on the closeness of bodies; the ways in which they touch, informing a sense of intamacy (even corpses and mangled bodies entangle the living with a strange romance) there is a visual language which intrests me in relation to the use of my own body as subject.
From these smaller drawings, I constructed an epic scaled painting, using both a Neo-classical style and spatial realm, and again, using my own body as subject. The objects, animals, clothing and gestural elements all echo the smaller drawings in subtle ways, but create thier own narrative which is meant to hover somewhere between the mundane and/or comical.
Many thanks to the Saskatchewan Arts Board for thier financial support of this project.
Beautiful Losers, oil on canvas, 108 x 210 inches, 2010.
Detail.
Detail.
Headquarters Studio, NYC installation, January 2010.
PULSE Art Fair NYC, April 2010.
Helping Hands 1- 12, Graphite on paper, 9 x 12 inches.
Helping Hands, 1- 12, Graphite on paper, 9 x 12 inches. (selection)
Helping Hands, 1- 12, Graphite on paper, 9 x 12 inches. (selection)
Helping Hands, 1- 12, Graphite on paper, 9 x 12 inches. (selection)