La Cage, Ici! 2016

Sandra Chevrier made this striking, collaged painting called La Cage, Ici!, and right away I'm hooked by the push-and-pull between the hyperreal face and the comic book fragments. It's like she's building up and tearing down at the same time. I find myself zooming in on the lips—that glossy, wet red! The paint is so luscious there, thick and built up, almost like a sculpture. Then my eye jumps to the Superman comics plastered on the other side of the face. The flatness of those graphic images against the depth of the painted eye—it's a beautiful tension. This layering effect reminds me of what Rauschenberg was doing with his combines. Chevrier is making her own kind of beautiful mess, turning pop culture scraps into something deeply felt. It’s a reminder that art doesn't have to be one thing. It can be a conversation, a collision, a beautiful, unresolved question.