WHO: Paco Pomet
WHAT: Montaigne's Nightmare
WHEN: September 10 - November 13, 2010
WHERE: MONYA ROWE GALLERY
504 West 22nd Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10011
212 255 5065
WHY:
Pomet's new series of paintings continues to reference Vintage photographs as the primary source for the subject matter. Subverting the original image by adding a surreal edge allows each painting to oscillate between fiction and reality. In El Becario (2010), a historical picture of a banal office scene is transformed into a witty psychological caricature. A mans face, comically distorted, unabashedly stares at the viewer making it unclear whether the viewer is being ridiculed, or if the artist is ridiculing his own self-awareness. A similar predilection for irony is present in Fable (2010), a vintage photograph (c. 1870) depicting a group of Russian Cossacks proudly showing off their kill (a dead tiger) is turned into a farcical display. Pomet challenges and questions the masculinity associated with hunting by replacing the mens faces with those of carton-like catheads. In doing so, the hunters become submissive, loveable and cute. Pomet uses humor as a vehicle to alter original pictorial motives, and deny its affirmations.
Paco Pomet
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