Narrative and Sequence

Theme or idea for fine art:

Faceless portraits, pushing what is "acceptable" for a persons home

Artists/photographers to look at:

-Lia Kimura

-Gideon Rubin

-KwangHo Shin

-Sabato Visconti

-Salvador Dali

(Notable mentions: Beksinski)

Lia Kimura:

Lia Kimura is a Japan born Polish painter whose work is based on her connections to her place of birth and self identity.

I have chosen to analyse Kimura's series of faceless portraits as they drew me in with their complexity and "realism". It also tied in strongly to my concept that I had come up with.

The majority of Kimura's work is kept and sold in auction houses to private collectors, usually in Warsaw. Kimura works on a canvas, painting with what I believe to either be oil paint or acrylic paint. There is a variety of different parts of her work that stands out, apart from the missing faces themselves. She has water-like paint dripping down some areas of the canvas, large layers of paint that stick out of the canvas creating a rough texture, almost as if the images was coming out of the canvas.

The model in any of her artworks is always portrayed as not a real person. Kimura said herself "I create anonymous faces and do not identify them with real people". In her work the "model" is often a pale faceless figure with the very top half of their chest exposed, usually contorted as if bending forwards, showing their collarbones and creating shadows over their skin. Her artwork mainly consists of two colours, a sandy washed out grey and black. The lack of colour makes this image seem all the more impactful in my opinion, creating a contrast between the backdrop and the foreground.

From her work I will sample the smudged blurring of faces.

Gideon Rubin:

Gideon Rubin is an Israeli artist who works with themes such as childhood, family and memory, with the latter being of great importance as it ties in to why his work has faceless people. In a memory it is a persons face that is harder to remember, as a body can always change but a face is constant and with so many faces to remember, they can simply disappear to us.

Rubin's artwork shows detailed images of people in portrait layouts with a key part being a flat colour washing over their face, removing a large part of their identity. Rubins work is displayed on a canvas as an oil painting. His artworks are displayed in galleries and exhibitions around the world.

The models in the images are always positioned to look like they are posing for a photo, as if he has painted over a families portrait, one that would hang in a hallway. Compared to other peoples work, Rubin has more simplistic and less realistic workpieces, creating a "cartoonish" animated look to his work.

The images look very soft with no hard edges and some details being simplified to blocks of flat paint applied around the base colour. The work appears to have no apparent texture to it, but does look aged, as there is a painted in border with dark scratches and bits of white painted on to make the image look faded and torn.

From his work I will sample the 'family portrait' style to my photos.

KwangHo Shin:

KwangHo Shin is a South Korean painter whos work attempts to capture the complex relationship between emotive expressions and the experience of the mind.

Shin's work shows a sort of "outline" of a persons head, painted in with quick and hectic black brush marks, contrasting heavily from the interior/face which is a sea of heavy and gloopy colour. Layers of paint have been applied over and over to each colour block to an excessive amount, creating a sea of textures and colours. He uses acrylic paint as it can dry very quickly and harden creating large clumps that stick to the surface of the canvas, a deliberate choice to make the face stand out from the rest of the simplistic backddrop/head. Tha paint hasnt just been arranged randomly but has been placed carefully, with each brush stroke being thought out and pre-planned. If one squints their eyes it is almost possible to see the structure of the face, an nose, two eyes and a mouth, represented by darker colours and direction of the paint, a key element to these artworks.

The bumpy paint certainly gives this work a unique texture and a completely unique appearance.

From his work I will sample the use of blocky colours.

Satbato Visconti:

Sabato Visconti is a Brazilian-born artist and photographer based in Western Massachusetts. Sabato has been experimenting with glitch and digital media since 2011 exploring how imaging practices have become absorbed by digital processes. His work ranges from gifs, animation and photography. There is a common theme which is glitches and errors. Visconti says he was inspired to create glitch art when an old broken camera he had would randomly add Zeros to the coding, adding distortion and pixelation, like a puzzle being rearranged in the wrong places.

This specific series of work is called 'Jules in June' where a woman, presumably named Jules is standing above, facing down onto the camera, against a backdrop of a pale blue sky. The camera being used is quite obviously a digital camera as much of Visconti's work process is based on him deliberately removing code from each file and re-arranging it to create his distorted and pixelated outcomes. The image was shot on location with natural lighting, not that this necessarily matters since Visconti essentially tears the image apart in post, creating a drastically different image by the end.

There is very little clarity thanks to how much is changed and warped, not just physically by creating "glitches" but by turning the contrast up, exposure settings and colours as well.

The image on the left appears to almost be a whole different image compared to the one on the right. The images vary in saturation but usually are quite colourful and saturated creating warmer images. Above all the images appear to be grainy and scratchy thanks to the afterimage of the model dragging across the screen, making me imagine it would be sharp and jagged.

From his work I will sample the glitch aspect of drastically changing an image.

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was a Spanish surrealist painter know around the world for his incredible artworks, with dreamlike landscapes and themes.

Salvador Dali works with linseed oil paint, which allowed him to use a very small brush to create small strokes to add incredible amounts of detail to his work. His appears almost nightmarish with long pulled out limbs and melting objects such as clocks, violins and people. His work is featured world-wide, however more locally, has work held at the Tate Modern.

Much of his work appears timeless, as it looks neither new nor old, with whites and blues, indistinguishable from sunrise or sunset, creating a sort of limbo of agelessness.

From his work I will sample the melting aspect.

Shooting my own work:

Estimate and Invoice: