Portrait N.5 by Fabio La Fauci

Portrait N.5 by Fabio La Fauci

On Thursday June 18th Guy Hepner and The TAX Collection are pleased to release a new series with Fabio La Fauci featuring ten unique portraits and are exclusive to the gallery. The artworks will be available directly on the Guy Hepner Online Shop on Thursday from 2pm EST.

“Fabio’s acrylic paste has been rounded perfectly into the shape of a face—so while it is irregular and disarming, each portrait remains rigorous in its composition and form, creating an intriguing tension between organic figurative shapes and abstract geometry, and between reality and perplexity.”

The new body of work by Fabio La Fauci deals with the subject of portraits, expanding it through an aesthetic research that is both recognizable and imaginary. The figurative language and the abstract language converse to paint the person and sculpt his personality.

The elongated neck becomes the platform for the head, betraying curiosity and a certain need for recognition. The head is instead a mask, a mystification of reality.

In this sense, given the levity in the consumption of contemporary images and the difficult reading of recognizable faces’ intentions, abstraction plays the role of interpreting reality and creating an additional level of complexity.

The painting is still a person, a person like the others with a sense of disorientation. A person without an answer or a clear question. This is “Is it you?”

The ceramic and the acrylic modeling paste take the place of the face, of the nose and the mouth. The gel digs up the roundness of the face. The face is complex and irregular, but rigorous in the form and in the composition.

Ceramics, an unconventional material for portraits in painting, and acrylic gel emerge from oil to continue the movement and the tensions. The juxtaposition of colors and materials are the result and the origin of Fabio’s aesthetic research that is, at the same time, demand and pleasure, dynamism and balance.