Exhibition

Michael St. John: The Passions

18 Sep 2021 – 6 Nov 2021

Regular hours

Saturday
10:00 – 19:00
Tuesday
10:00 – 19:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 19:00
Thursday
10:00 – 19:00
Friday
10:00 – 19:00

Save Event: Michael St. John: The Passions2

I've seen this

People who have saved this event:

close

Michael St. John's 'The Passions' painted in grisaille focus on the slippage that can occur between actors and their characters. St. John’s portraits are predicated on the ever-so-slight prick or break in an otherwise seamless image.

About

(Los Angeles, CA) de boer gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Michael St. John entitled The Passions. These paintings find their source imagery from identities of selected filmic characters and are all painted in grisaille⸺a method of painting in monochromatic grayscale. Focusing on the slippage that can occur between actors and their characters, St. John’s portraits are predicated on the ever-so-slight prick or break in an otherwise seamless image. A catalog, with an essay by art historian Robert Hobbs will accompany the exhibition.
 

St. John’s The Passions are inspired by Charles Le Brun’s engravings of expressive heads, which illuminated ideas articulated in his 1668 lecture “Conférence sur l’expression générale et particulière” which aimed to represent human emotions nobly. In St. John's paintings, he confronts the subject of mass-media figures in his painted portraits in order to reveal breaks in their cinematic facades, disclosing hints of a more profound reality.

In one painting, St. John finds Gwyneth Paltrow’s Margot Tenenbaum (from The Royal Tenenbaums) particularly evocative because of her ability to switch roles from performer to observer. Thus, his portrait depicts a fictional character, who also serves as a surrogate viewer. In The Passions, St. John has generated conditions for punctum by amplifying the number of roles some of his sitters have undertaken.

More straightforward, is a painting of the business card of Patrick Bateman, the superficial rich yuppie investment banker in American Psycho. St. John’s predilection for metonymic connections is playfully implemented in works that also reference familiar art world tactics. St. John’s painting of Gloria Wandrous’s lipstick-written message “No Sale” in BUtterfield 8 can be construed ironically to refer to both this character, who ultimately sells herself, and St. John’s continued use of the text in paintings over the past decade. 

Painted at times in sharp photorealistic detail, along with pronounced brushwork, sometimes within the same work allows each painting an overarching abstractness and for the portraits to differ significantly, creating tension and distance. Removed from fandom’s slavish idolization of fictionalized personalities, the work serves as the basis for layered meanings in which extrinsic facts either work in tandem with the fictive character he is portraying or to challenge it.

The main entrance of the exhibition will include a text-based wall installation by Mark Verabioff titled, Another Sunny & Sinister 88 Degrees In LA, 2021. 

What to expect? Toggle

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Michael St. John

Comments

Have you been to this event? Share your insights and give it a review below.