Anne Grabow: 2013

Self Shot 1, oil on canvas, 90 x 120cm

Anne Grabow: Self Shots on Canvas
Solo exhibition at Mein Haus Am See. Exhibition dates: 21.03.13 – 10.04.13.

For her first solo exhibition in Berlin, the multimedia artist Anne Grabow presents her public with a playful series of seven paintings that do more than merely address the notions of passivity and narcissism as having become integral to the Information Age and go beyond simply challenging pre-established roles. Emphatically celebrated as a kind of spectacular object, the artist’s own likeness is repeatedly thrust upon the gaze to induce, through a kaleidoscope of intimacy and a cascade of longing, a convoluted act of voyeurism.

Subsequent to a long tradition of female self-portraiture and in many ways echoing the work of Claude Cahun or Cindy Sherman, the conceptual self-portraits that constitute Self Shots on Canvas depict the artist in what would appear to be various poses in a variety of roles. Indeed, having aspired at a young age toward a theatrical career and having later received her diploma in costume design, the notion of adopted roles is nothing new to fashion designer, musician, video-artist and painter Anne Grabow. In this case, however, her insistence upon the painterly medium has provided the artist with a means by which to refine the complexity of her role-playing games. Not only the portrayals themselves but the formal properties, painterly styles and pictorial references employed to produce them have all been imbued with the same fantastic, interchangeable qualities that children so flippantly attribute to their props and apparel when indulging in dress-up games.

Self Shots 2 - 7:

Whether portrayed as Ophelia sinking into a bed of flowers (Self Shot 3), as a Caravaggian temptress (Self Shot 5), a Van Dyckish, Elizabethan Bowie (Self Shot 4) or a modern pop star alla Botticelli (Self Shot 7), Grabow plays with history and identity in much the same way she might do with make-up for a fashion shoot. Yet, however reminiscent of work by artists such as Sherman her self-portraits may appear to be, she has nevertheless retained in her depictions—in this regard more akin to the paintings of Frida Kahlo—something that her more recent predecessors have often attempted to veil: the artist’s own distinctive facial features.

In this respect, the roles, as it were, would appear not to be roles at all but rather something more like mirror images in a comprehensive, virtual fitting room. In fact, the poses are not really poses either: these portraits are in no way staged but instead selected from a wide range of almost arbitrarily shot photographic templates, the origins of which become clearer upon consideration of the protagonist’s gaze and the object toward which it is directed—namely toward itself as captured by the artist’s Web-cam with a single tap of the touchpad (a notion that is further underscored, in some cases, by the colouration of the reflected monitor-light).

Whether taken by Grabow out of boredom, an eagerness toward instant gratification, the desire to document her own development amidst the passing of time to produce a sort of visual diary or the spontaneous will to appraise her own immediate appearance, these Web-cam stills in painterly form represent a small selection from an endless row of digital originals. Thus recalling the photo booth portraits of Andy Warhol, a certain Pop quality clearly emerges. In contrast to the silk-screen method, however, these snapshots have been arduously painted into oversized existence. Still, they refrain from any photo-realistic ambitions. Far from employing any use of projection, Grabow worked from thumbshot-sized colour printouts to produce these fairly large-formatted canvases. The question, then, is why all the trouble? Art-historical aims aside, what is it, finally, that is to be monumentalized through painting here? Perhaps nothing other than the loneliness of being an everyday voyeur—a voyeur who watches themselves. How boring. How terribly sad. How utterly unsatisfying and yet altogether characteristic of being-in-the-spectacular-world. Not to worry though; Anne Grabow has found a novel solution. With her series of seven emphatic Self Shots, she insists that we join in on the fun. The beholder is adamantly called upon to watch her watching herself and thus become the voyeur par excellence. But, just to make sure that the roles are clear, she’s been wise enough to play the fool (Self Shot 1) and—as though to exclaim How now, my hearts! Did you never see the picture of ‘we three’?—remind the beholder that someone is watching them watching her watching herself.

Nathan Moore