SVAD Student Exhibition

Figure painting is among the oldest visual subjects in human history and its status has not diminished in art’s fractured contemporary moment. How can we account for the continuous historical precedence of figure and portrait painting? We contend that, because it is the empathetic form par excellence, the human body in art cannot be trusted: it is always proposing something other than what its surface demonstrates. The grandiloquence of figurations in the work of Andrew Snow, for example, suggests that these are utopian bodies yearning for mythic intelligibility—for the psyche to be written upon the body. John Currie’s portraits take an altogether different approach: here, the possibility of legibility or complete identity is questioned and actively compromised through the painter’s process. The human body provides an endless template for allegory, and it is especially useful for the artful projection of controversial or taboo content. This exhibition proposes to display a full spectrum of perspectives and techniques, while maintaining a clarifying yet surprising dialogue amongst the work as a whole.

A collection of figure and portrait paintings by Gabriel Cortese, John Currie, Lila Villalobos, Emile Mausner, Jordan Pascal, Andrew Snow, and Nadya Sudjita.