Self-Portraits of others : English Version

It’s not the artists’ subject matter that’s under fire, but their motivation that’s on trail. Now that we know that images can mean whatever, whoever wants them to mean, we don’t trust anybody anymore, especially ourselves.” Marlene Dumas
 

Self-Portraits of Others, a work by an American artist, Christopher Stern, delivers a sense of expression that reveals much of the inspirations behind his work. Through spontaneous brushstrokes, Christopher Stern’s portraits leave their audience oblivious to the absence of words. These highly expressive portraits capture emotions in the eyes and the face of each character that are open to viewers’ own interpretation.

Christopher Stern employed what he has harnessed from his inwardness to give contexts to these portraits. The work deeply reflects the individuality of the painter while taking the shape of collective random figures. Inspired by print-images, films and websites, he has created a series of semi-abstract images - inviting the audience to have involvement with the characters and interpret them from their own viewpoint. This delightfully gives the audience an investigative and analytical role.

Part of this exhibition resonates with the famous hands from 1973 Las manos de terror by Osvaldo Guayasamin, which convey a sense of greed, desperation and fear. Christopher Stern’s hands, however, are represented as a mean by which the artist expresses his inner feelings. The hands pose as his emotions and expressions that appear on the faces of his characters.

Self-Portraits of Others is a collection that appears to emphasize not so much the subject of the painting itself, but rather the audience’s direct relationship with the artist, , or perhaps the artist’s relationship with the images he chooses to paint.  It may be for this reason that the figures generally are painted as the only focus of the canvas, generally alone, indeterminately contextualized.

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