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    • 2017-18: Profile Pictures
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Marlys Mandaville

  • Events
  • About/CV
  • Work
    • Video
    • 2021
    • 2020
    • 2019: Visibility
    • 2019: Project Interaction Navigation
    • 2019
    • 2018-19: ECE Caregivers
    • 2018 - ongoing: Hodaka Days
    • 2018
    • 2017-18: Profile Pictures
    • 2017-2018
    • 2016
    • 2013-2015
    • Arts Writing
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“Profile Pictures” questions the meaning of “connection” within the era of social media. Just as we form, build, and brand our social media profiles, I carefully piece together and construct my abstract figures. In this way they are all the same, yet they exist apart in isolation. This is the experience of sitting behind a computer screen “connecting -- you interact with others by disconnecting from your physical environment and the people within it.

 The figures of Profile Pictures are colorful, direct, and accessible – but exist apart, isolated. I question the meaning of presence: how much of our identity is grounded in physical vs. virtual space?

I evoke this state of connect vs. disconnect by using gestural, complementary colors that vibrate against one another, materializing the rift between the virtual and physical worlds. Both watercolors and oils allow me to illustrate this momentary and emotive in-between place. The translucency of watercolors illustrate transparent and transient facial expressions, while the thick texture of oils suggest the movement of a moment in passing – a place of unsettle.

Making visible these intangible and isolated moments of emotion, I ground our prefabricated personas of social media, humanizing them to be understood as a shared experience. I make accessible the non-space between the virtual and physical worlds, a place where, in our day-to-day lives, we seem to find ourselves caught now more often than not.

 

View fullsize Used to Know
View fullsize As the Waves Roll Back You Dissipate
View fullsize Night
View fullsize I Thought that was You in the Crowd
View fullsize Stopped to Smell the Flowers
View fullsize The Rhythm of Human Expression
View fullsize Reptilian Drag Party
View fullsize Pearls
View fullsize Drifter
View fullsize Firework Reminders
View fullsize Color Me Straight
View fullsize Soft Punk
View fullsize It's OK
View fullsize Clown Dream
View fullsize Stacking on the Smiles
View fullsize Selectivity
View fullsize Anomaly
View fullsize The Colors and Shape of a Face from Childhood
View fullsize In Your Dreams
View fullsize See You at Comicon
View fullsize Talking Head
View fullsize Talking to Me Like A Woman
View fullsize You Didn't Tell Me But I
View fullsize Probably from X-Files (remember Flukeman?)
View fullsize Owl Man
View fullsize Putting on my Facial Features for the Day
View fullsize Pickle Juice
View fullsize The Power
View fullsize Vehemance
View fullsize Clinging to the Idea of --
View fullsize In Passing
View fullsize Yellow Hair
View fullsize The Colors of my Grandma's Guest Room Comforter in Portland
View fullsize Grimace
View fullsize  Watercolor on hot press paper. 12" x 9." 2018. Unframed— $40-80 sliding scale.
View fullsize Ocean Visibility
View fullsize Moon Baby Dream
View fullsize Profile (Pic)
View fullsize Stripes
View fullsize Bow Lips
View fullsize Star Trek Gender
View fullsize Outline of You (Me)
View fullsize Referee Halo
View fullsize bb (binary bullshit)
View fullsize Which Layer Am I Giving You Today
View fullsize Always Reeling in a Loss of Control
View fullsize A Rift in Perception
View fullsize I Thought it was just Me for so Long
View fullsize  Watercolor on hot press paper. 12" x 9." 2018. Unframed— $40-80 sliding scale.
View fullsize Pretty Boi
View fullsize Loose Discipline
View fullsize Bows
View fullsize Identity Framework
View fullsize Repetitions (new discoveries?)
View fullsize Disguise III
View fullsize Disguise II
View fullsize Flamboyant Disguise
View fullsize Lingering