Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Christian Edler’s Self Portraits Show the Artist At Odds with Himself

Christian Edler's self-portraits hint at an inner conflict brewing within the artist's psyche. Edler uses his own likeness for surrealist visual experiments, painting himself with various mutations that explore the battles we have with ourselves. In one work, Edler's face multiplies over and over, creating a web of mouths, fingers, and eye sockets that seems bent on destroying itself. In another piece, he collapses face down in resignation, his face cracking like a ceramic vase. Other works are more hopeful, however, like the one where he cuts himself loose from puppet strings and heads towards a new destiny.

Christian Edler’s self-portraits hint at an inner conflict brewing within the artist’s psyche. Edler uses his own likeness for surrealist visual experiments, painting himself with various mutations that explore the battles we have with ourselves. In one work, Edler’s face multiplies over and over, creating a web of mouths, fingers, and eye sockets that seems bent on destroying itself. In another piece, he collapses face down in resignation, his face cracking like a ceramic vase. Other works are more hopeful, however, like the one where he cuts himself loose from puppet strings and heads towards a new destiny.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Bright flora bursts in Kent Williams's paintings (featured in HF Vol. 21). Thick brushstrokes of hot pink, mint and navy hint at an arrangement of organic growths. Williams frequently positions his subjects in the outdoors, where they inhabit areas that seem wild and overgrown yet feel contained like miniature Edens. His characters fervently move as if enacting a frenetic dance performance, their motion captured by his expressive use of paint. While Williams has been widely recognized for his figurative work over the past 20 years, his first solo show with 101/Exhibit in Los Angeles, "How Human of You," marks a shift into abstraction. Figures are still present in many of the works, but Williams removes the idea of time and place, instead suspending them in an imaginary space where his flamboyant color choices elicit a visceral, emotional response.
There is seemingly no element too exotic to inhabit an oil painting by Alan MacDonald, whose works traverse cultures and histories to present something always elegant in execution. At the base of MacDonald’s work seems to be a need for adventure, exploring inspiration and varying perspectives in each work.
Interpretations of Lyon based Eric Lacombe's mixed media works and paintings have been varied and extreme: monstrous, melancholy, horrific, and even beautiful. Describing his art as "caricatures of the soul", the self-taught artist's images exaggerate and distort his characters' faces into haunting portrayals. Their faces look almost like masks, some painted without mouths or eyes, or given bird-like beaks, and yet their transfiguration is the most revealing thing about them. Each is a sort of reflection of the artist's own feelings, who likens his subjects' appearance to a deconstruction of their torment.
Fred Stonehouse's paintings look like they take place within the innermost crevices of a troubled mind rather than in any semblance of a real place. Unshaven, rugged, yet boyish, his characters seem to battle internal conflicts, feelings of guilt, and insecurities. Their inner demons come across as loaded visual symbols (and sometimes actual demons), which Stonehouse elucidates with text scrawled within each work.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List