I find this theme of this exhibit very intriguing, and I’ll pull from featured artist JJ Ohlinger’s artist statement to illuminate just why it is so intriguing.
“For the past several years my work has been an examination of the ideas and concepts of what “Identity” means and how I, as a contemporary artist, challenge the conventions of traditional portrait painting. Historically, we are all familiar with the grand portraits of world leaders, nobility and the great patrons of society. But in today’s age, they don’t serve much more of a purpose to us than decoration for currency. We are so inundated with imagery that it becomes difficult to recount something we may have seen only minutes earlier. We encounter so many people on a daily basis, that we rarely notice the individual sitting at the table next to us in a restaurant. My work is about taking notice and hopefully discovering the unique identity of the individual depicted not only in the image but also the people you will encounter today.”
We hope you will come out to the Museum of Art on Friday and challenge your own perspective of your identity and how it manifests itself, or how others close to you or even those people from a distance choose to present themselves.
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