Self Portraits
Self portrait is a classic category within any art form. Here are mine.
- Grounded
- Peace
- Always a smile on my face
- Still mommy’s little girl
- Whiped out
Archive for ‘January, 2013’
On the inside looking out
Winters in Scandinavia are dark and dreary. On the positive side it is acceptable to isolate yourself from life during the winter. Hiding inside houses behind walls of naked branches, seeing the outside world only in glimpses, hibernating, waiting for spring – or dreading spring.
Man’s Burden
What do we carry and how do we carry it?
We all carry something – bags, water bottles, scars, excess weight, tattoos, emotional pain. Some of what we carry is evident as they are physical objects but the rest we can only speculate about.
With this body of work my intention is to focus on what people physically carry but to encourage the viewer to look deeper. I chose to make the images faceless as faces often draw our attention. My aim here is to look beyond facial expression.
We all have preset notions about a person from the way they look but often these notions tell us more about ourselves than about the person we are looking at. By considering what clues to the personality we can glean from just looking at the center of a person, what they carry, and how they carry themselves we might gain an insight into how we view ourselves.
In the eye of the beholder
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is said. I have a never ending fascination of urban decay and a deep wish to capture what I see to show others what they are missing when disgarding apparent dicline and focusing only on what is immidiately ethetically pleasing. As with people, objects that are battered, beaten, and less than perfect attracts me with their strange and haunting beauty – colour, texture, contrat.
These photos were all shot at Refshaleøen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Oh so quiet
What are they waiting for – these objects? Where is everyone? Did they just leave or not yet arrive? Or is this place just a figment of my imagination? Perhaps it all will be gone the moment I turn my back.
Fireworks
When I was a child fireworks frightened me. I found it scary with its wild power that could get out of hand any minute. Instead I would tour the neighborhood next morning and collect what was left – feeling safe
with it now and imagining what it had looked liked the night before. Being grown I am now more fascinated with how beauty is fleeting but leaves something at least as interesting as the obvious, short lived splendor of the night before.
Canvas work
A majority of these works play with reality. What is reality? When does our concept of reality slip? It will be different for each person, as I guide you on a journey from definately real to definately not real.
Common for these works is that they are all series of four letter sized photos mounted on painted canvas (size 60 * 60 cm) with a cross stitch in each corner. The background of the canvas is painted with acrylic paint and the border (not seen) is gold.
The photos are cut out by hand and so no two prints can be the same. Several of the works include painting on the photos, gluing parts from other photos, dripping water, etc.
(Click on the i in the top left hand corner of the images to get the titles displayed)
Karin Elsu - Portfolio 