Matilda Aslizadeh: Golden Globes
Matilda Aslizadeh Golden 2 2010 Courtesy Pari Nadimi Gallery
On display at Simon Fraser University Gallery is a new suite of six pseudo-portraits by Vancouver-based artist Matilda Aslizadeh. Entitled “Phantom Smile,” the exhibition is inspired by the powerful cult of celebrity and our society’s insatiable thirst for paparazzi pomp. Each headshot—blown up by the artist to six feet across—features a groomed, bejewelled woman flashing the kind of impersonal, practised and static smile that is typically reserved for red-carpet flashbulb moments. Aslizadeh has further removed her subjects from our reality by applying a thick sepia haze to their images, a soft-focus effect that suggests how the omnipresent Hollywood machine obscures our perceptions and dulls our senses. Additionally, the golden fog points to the rise of reality-show stardom and Facebook, both of which have blurred the boundary between where the real world ends and our collective dream world begins. The obscured, staged portraits could melt together, as they are virtually indistinguishable from one another. Each stands alone, however, as some version of the familiar celebrity icon that we all worship. The result is a body of work that promises to be both seductive and condemning. (8888 University Dr, Burnaby BC)
| |
|
Matilda Aslizadeh Golden 6 2010 Courtesy Pari Nadimi Gallery |
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
