Actress Tilda Swinton looks out, instantly recognizable with her fine-boned features and short hair. She is surrounded by a mass of painted blobs like a surreal coral reef. Singer Michael Stipe looks straight at us, impeccably drawn and less familiar than in his R.E.M. days, now with a full-beard look and nose piercing.These are just two of the images by Sandro Kopp in his “Take Time” show in Paris.Kopp has long been exploring portrait painting, both for its possibilities and boundaries.For his last few exhibitions, he has been painting people via Skype conversations. The works explored the meeting of classical painting and digital technology, with realistic edges and pixelated visions. This time he has gone for the first show since 2008 that is video-chat-free. Instead, all the portraits are based on one live sitting with friends and family members, lasting between two and six hours.The main paintings of the show are “Take Time I, II and III.” These all have encrusted oil paint on the edges. Each one is made up of several years’ worth of scrapings from palettes. Kopp says they slowly build up, collecting time, like a coral reef. Each blob of paint is the remains of a particular day or two of painting.The portrait itself is then painted in the center which is left more or less clean and flat. After the subject sitting, the image is enhanced over the next few months. Dozens of layers are painted on, surrounded by precious metals like gold, palladium and platinum.Some of the palettes that were scraped clean to provide these “reefs” of paint are also exhibited, carrying self-portraits of the artist, whose work has been shown many locations such as Lehmann Maupin, New York; Victoria Miro and the National Portrait Gallery in London.Accompanying these pieces in the Paris show is “The New You,” a series that Kopp started much earlier in 2003. These paintings were made without using photography as an aide memoire. Instead, each subject is again a friend or family member of the artist, mainly inhabitants of The Factory, a communal apartment and hub of creative life in Wellington, New Zealand where Kopp lived at the time.“The New You” sitters are painted without clothes, props or background. This allows the representations to be free from anything that would link them to their sociological background or zeitgeist.The title of the series shows these images became a new collaborative entity between sitter and painter who filters them through his perception and limitations.Kopp, born 1978, is of New Zealand descent but grew up in Germany. His work has been winning acclaim for its mix of classical portraiture with abstract and digital elements. He is Swinton’s partner and is now based in the Highlands of Scotland.Click on the slideshow for more images.“Take Time” at Galerie Eric Dupont, 138 Rue du Temple, 75003 Paris, opens on October 8 and runs through October 29. http://www.eric-dupont.com/
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