the 21st century portraiture

In portraiture the theme is always the face. In fact the word "portrait" means "a pictorial likeness or photograph of a face”. It is also a recording of an individual’s appearance and personality, whether obtained through the lens of a camera, molded by the hands of a sculptor, or captured by a painter’s brush. Exhibited at the Portsmouth Museum of Art, the recent exhibit called iIMAGE: The Uncommon Portrait stretches the bounds of the familiar traditional portraiture and morphs into unexpected interpretations of an unusual breed of portraiture created by new age techniques – including the use of 21^st century technology. 

The exhibit features a number of contemporary artists, such as artists Evan Roth and Aram Bartholl, the creator of a unique collection of interactive online portraits using QR codes and Google searches. Another featured artist is Daniel Rozin, whom created interactive portrait installations that have the capability to react to the audience. More than a dozen artists is featured in this show, including R Luke Dubois, whose “portraits” consists of a single Snellen-style eye chart for each U.S president to have delivered the SOTU addresses. Dubois’ “Hindsight” collection was amongst the pieces I found interesting. Instead of the typical characters displayed in an eye chart, they are replaced by words drawn from a president’s speech, presented in order of most frequent (top line) to least frequent (bottom line) word from the address.

Another collection that had caught my eye was Martin Schoeller’s portraits of female bodybuilders, detailing clearly captured physical features about the women who have become bodybuilders. Observing the images of competitive, female body builders was riveting, fascinating, and very disturbing, but what made them more intriguing was Schoeller’s caption about his collection. He mentioned that no matter if his subject were famous, beloved or hated by the public, or even scrutinized for what they are or what they do, every single one of his subject are inevitably vulnerable in front of his lens.

All in all, the artists represented at the exhibit displayed their unique ways of integrating contemporary techniques directly into what is habitually thought of as a very traditional and timeless art form called portraiture.