Art Plural Gallery is pleased to announce After, a solo exhibition by Israeli artist Michel Platnic. Running from 22 January to 21 February 2015, After is a unique exhibition experience featuring dramatic ‘living paintings’ presented form of video installations and large-scale prints. Using a complex combination of traditional and innovative mediums, Platnic’s portraits, stylistically described as ‘after’ the iconic Francis Bacon, come to life, moving within their frames as though existing within a microcosmic universe.
Michel Platnic’s preoccupation with the human form is vivid in his latest works, where he challenges the boundaries of artistic mediums by merging technology with tradition. In a nod to the work of Francis Bacon, Platnic’s ‘living paintings’ expand on the idea of the portrait by bringing them to life using a combination of photography, video, painting and performance. After painting a scene on a cinema-style set, Platnic then puts himself and his models into this world, painting their faces and body with bold strokes of paint in the style of Bacon’s painterly yet abstract portraits.
The result is unexpected: projected videos of the portraits seem entirely static upon first glance, until one notices the gentle raising of the chest as the subject breathes, the dart of the eye as it follows the viewer around the room, and the careful tilt of the head. “In my videos characters build their own space. The place they occupy is a product of their own actions, while in some other works they sense the space by moving into it and exploring it. There is the internal space, but there is an outside as well. There is hope, and reality is modified. Characters have their own say and their own existence”, the artist explains. Ultimately, Platnic’s portraits break free from the existentialist torment that Bacon expressed in his work, allowing an interactive environment where the subject of a ‘painting’ can exist within its structure and seize the life that it is given.
“The living character can show more complexity. He has a soul, and it requires more blindness to see him only as flesh.” – Michel Platnic
