(S)elf Portraits: Fiction, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi in Portrait

(S)elf Portraits: Fiction, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi in Portrait offers a bold exploration of contemporary portraiture, where Andrew Maughan, Back, Fran Baena, Miguel Scheroff, and Suanjaya Kentuc destabilize traditional notions of identity and subjectivity. Each artist approaches portraiture not as a static representation but as an experimental platform, challenging conventions of the human and the imagined through their unique pictorial language.

In this collection of works, portraiture is redefined as a liminal space where the real and speculative converge. Each artist employs a distinctive approach to portray a spectrum of fluid identities constructed through layers of fiction, narrative, and fantasy. The human face becomes a symbolic surface, open to interpretation and capable of transcending its own limits. Maughan, Back, Baena, Scheroff, and Kentuc depict figures that seem to emerge from alternate dimensions, suggesting that identity is a mutable phenomenon, shaped by both internal and external forces that transform and enrich it.

The exhibition presents a sophisticated vision of identity as a speculative process, inviting the viewer to confront the malleability of the “self.” This painterly exercise goes beyond portraiture as a mere reflection, creating a narrative space where desires, projections, and subjective realities overlap. Thus, (S)elf Portraits not only explores visual representation but also questions authenticity and interpretation in contemporary art.

Through this exhibit, we are invited to contemplate identity as an evolving construct—a story in progress that finds in painting an ideal medium for articulation and reinvention. The exhibition is, in essence, a meditation on the nature of representation in an era of hyperreality and post-truth, where each work challenges the boundary between reality and fiction, the tangible and the imagined, reminding us that in art, as in life, identity is always a possibility in constant expansion.

On the cover: Back Valley of the Wind, 2024

Source: Yusto-Giner Gallery