Nicole
Sabourin
My
work is influenced by the best of disposable culture:
Japanese comics, fashion magazines, popular music,
and science fiction novels. Not being able to escape
the control mass media holds over aesthetics, I seek
to explore it, and through stylization and unexpected
color choice, expose the artificiality of what is
presented to us as natural. Rather than dismissing
the artificial, I chose to celebrate it for what it
is: a creative process of identity play that only
becomes dangerous when that process is denied and
its products become homogenized. It is then that the
artificial can be mistaken for natural, and become
the only acceptable model, thus removing the element
of play and enforcing unrealistic expectations on
the individual. The aesthetics presented in my paintings
are familiar, and alien, all at once: "theirs" and
mine.
Above all, I hope to raise several questions in the
mind of the viewer: how realistic does a figure have
to be, to be considered beautiful, or to be sexualized?
How does certain colors, and combinations of lines,
portray human emotions? How does the recognition of
titles, stolen from pop songs, effect the viewers
perception of the work? How does the viewer determine
gender when dominant cultural signifiers are absent?
My paintings are not portraits, as they do not represent
real people. They are visual representations of my
dreams, and desires. My paintings are archetypes for
a new mythology, fashion spreads from fiction novels,
they are songs in oil.
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