La Cage et les bêtes oubliées 2022

Sandra Chevrier made La Cage et les bêtes oubliées using paint and collage, and the process is right there on the surface. The juxtaposition of hyper-realism with the collaged comic book pages is a great tension, a kind of push and pull between control and letting go. These are two things that I think about a lot when I'm painting. How much to control, how much to let the material lead. The layering in this piece really gets me going. The way the hyper-realistic portrait is disrupted and obscured by the comic book fragments. It’s like a mask, revealing and concealing at the same time. Looking closely at the jagged edges of the collaged elements, I can almost feel the artist tearing at the paper, making these sharp, aggressive shapes. It's a great dialogue, the smoothness of the skin against the rough paper. This idea of masking and layering reminds me of Wangechi Mutu's collages, which also deal with ideas of identity and representation. We’re all just building on each other, you know?