Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Alex Garant Presents New Double-Eyed Portraits in “Wakefulness”

Canadian artist Alex Garant's "double-eyed" portraits, featured here on our blog, have become instantly recognizable for the dizzying effect they create. Her style of overlaying her subject's features like eyes and lips produces multiple images that are captivating but admittedly, also challenging to look at; for some, her works create phantom images, and even the feeling of being intoxicated. Her new series of portraits, titled "Wakefulness", is inspired by how our brains enter into a state of consciousness when we wake up.

Canadian artist Alex Garant’s “double-eyed” portraits, featured here on our blog, have become instantly recognizable for the dizzying effect they create. Her style of overlaying her subject’s features like eyes and lips produces multiple images that are captivating but admittedly, also challenging to look at; for some, her works create phantom images, and even the feeling of being intoxicated.

To Garant, the vibrancy created by the double exposure is more than just an optical illusion. Over three years ago, the artist experienced a sort of creative epiphany when she had a heart attack as the result of a random viral infection. It was a real “wake up call,” she says, and in many ways, the “vibrating” look of her art is like a fragile heart beat.

Her new series of portraits, titled “Wakefulness”, is inspired by how our brains enter into a state of consciousness when we wake up. Wakefulness is a daily recurring brain state in which an individual is conscious and engages in coherent cognitive and behavioral responses to the external world such as communication, ambulation, eating, and sex. The longer the brain has been awake, the greater the spontaneous firing rates of cerebral cortex neurons with this increase being reversed by sleep. Garant’s paintings intend to stimulate our brain’s responses in similar ways with bright colors and visual elements. Each piece reflects a different state of awakening, coming out of sleep, dreams, or whatever it may be, and into our jarring, over-stimulating reality.

“Wakefulness” by Alex Garant will be on view at Spoke Art Gallery in San Francisco, CA from February 4th through 27th, 2016.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
 Soey Milk has seen a lot of creative and personal growth in the past year- she tackles life with the same focus as her precisely detailed, figurative paintings. When we last caught up with her, she was still a student at Pasadena Art Center and experimenting with a new style that incorporates colorful drapery. Recently graduated, her upcoming show at CHG Circa on December 13th showcases the result of her progress. Appropriately, the exhibition title "SINAVRO" loosely translates from Korean to "To progress slowly, almost imperceptibly." Her identity as a young woman living between two cultures, Korean and American, is represented in her intermixing styles.
Minimal and quiet, Brian Robertson’s artworks seem to be both a homage to cubism and other various abstract art movements, and to our curious obsession with space and the universe. Going against typical physiognomy, the LA-based artist dissembles people and objects with clean acrylic shapes and lines juxtaposed with controlled dashes of spray paint. Looking closer, you’ll also notice that various portals appear in his work — a black hole doorway to a starry universe, a triangular cut-out through which a blue line travels — perhaps a commentary on the loneliness of the human condition and the vast wonder of the universe. On a more humorous level, Robertson names every one of his people or objects with tongue-in-cheek titles such as Mr Pot-Head Worm-Mouth or Mr Yellow-Brick Shit-House.
Canadian artist Alex Garant paints realistic portraits that capture her subjects in multiples. Using traditional portrait techniques, her oil paintings combine graphic design elements with abstraction in great detail. Looking at her work is like getting lost in an optical illusion, where colorful patterns are key to holding the composition together. Among her stylistic inspirations, she credits early ink printing, Pop surrealism, Baroque tapestries and themes found in retro kitsch. This is especially apparent in her use of image superposition, where her subject's 70s-esque big lips and eyes are enhanced.
Chinese born, California based artist Vincent Xeus paints his portraits with a sensitive treatment of light and shading to an almost haunting effect. Though his work shares elements of 17th-century Dutch masters and contemporaries like Gerhard Richter, Odd Nerdrum, Francis Bacon, and Antonio López Garcia, Xeus has created an entirely new approach. Previously featured on our blog, he has said that his intent is to reveal that which is beneath what we think we see. This involves smudging the paint until the subject's face is hardly recognizable or appears blurry and more impressionistic. His latest body of work, "Hue is Full / A Thousand Faces", which opened Friday at Gallery 1261 in Colorado, takes his unconventional style to a new level where he wipes and scrapes away at his subjects.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List