POST MODERN DRIP STATEMENT
Maxmillian Peralta
My paintings utilize conventions of traditional portraiture of powerful figures in history to draw attention to a variety of subcultures. I use idealistic motifs and components of historical portraiture and push them into the contemporary. The paintings are set within subcultures where the figures can perform their subcultural identities in a glamorous, satirical, and absurd manner. The more they over-perform their chosen identity, the more they lose themselves. This gives the figures in my paintings the chance to have their “self-image” represented as an everlasting artifact through painting; someone to be remembered in perpetuity.
While the work depicts figures flirting with their own sense of reality, I paint with stark naturalism and elevate the images of my subjects through close technical rendering and the larger scale of the work. The paintings are alluring, rich, and life-like. My process begins with a highly detailed acrylic underpainting and I add an oil glaze on top to achieve contrast, depth, and detail, thus presenting the subjects as iconic, monumental, and sanctified. The range of subcultural identities I use include hunting, boxing, fashion, and tattooing. These subcultures are represented through symbols which act as accoutrements to their performative and expressive qualities.
I am positioning the subjects for discussion. I draw attention to these subcultures and pose questions to the viewer about status, power, and perception. What do we value? The symbols within my work seek to ask this, and provoke further inquiries into the paintings as both critique and celebration. This is due to their polysemic nature. I earnestly portray these subcultures through illusionistic artifice, additionally encoding humor into the ridiculous and over-the-top scenes these paintings present. The conventions of court portraiture elevate the sitter, but by bringing this type of work into a contemporary setting, I invite viewers to criticize this overly self-important style of imagery. The figures in these portraits stray further from the real human being, and more into the idealized, fantastical, fabricated self. The work pokes fun at the elitist history of painting which includes patrons who cast themselves as icons through elaborate commissioned paintings and connects that to current flex culture. I paint this duality out of sincere love for subculture, and the simultaneously absurd nature of pouring your entire identity into these performative acts.
While the work depicts figures flirting with their own sense of reality, I paint with stark naturalism and elevate the images of my subjects through close technical rendering and the larger scale of the work. The paintings are alluring, rich, and life-like. My process begins with a highly detailed acrylic underpainting and I add an oil glaze on top to achieve contrast, depth, and detail, thus presenting the subjects as iconic, monumental, and sanctified. The range of subcultural identities I use include hunting, boxing, fashion, and tattooing. These subcultures are represented through symbols which act as accoutrements to their performative and expressive qualities.
I am positioning the subjects for discussion. I draw attention to these subcultures and pose questions to the viewer about status, power, and perception. What do we value? The symbols within my work seek to ask this, and provoke further inquiries into the paintings as both critique and celebration. This is due to their polysemic nature. I earnestly portray these subcultures through illusionistic artifice, additionally encoding humor into the ridiculous and over-the-top scenes these paintings present. The conventions of court portraiture elevate the sitter, but by bringing this type of work into a contemporary setting, I invite viewers to criticize this overly self-important style of imagery. The figures in these portraits stray further from the real human being, and more into the idealized, fantastical, fabricated self. The work pokes fun at the elitist history of painting which includes patrons who cast themselves as icons through elaborate commissioned paintings and connects that to current flex culture. I paint this duality out of sincere love for subculture, and the simultaneously absurd nature of pouring your entire identity into these performative acts.
