NYAB Event - Hannah Rose Dumes "Compositions and Possibilities"

Hannah Rose Dumes "Compositions and Possibilities"

Frontrunner Gallery

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Frontrunner Gallery presents Compositions and Possibilities, Hannah Rose Dumes’ first solo exhibition in New York. This exhibition, comprised of mixed-media paintings on panel, explores two of painting’s oldest subjects: the self-portrait and the still life.

Dumes’ portraits incorporate film stills from self-made fitness and face aerobic videos. The face, when recognizable, is treated aggressively and broken into pieces. Crude holes cut from vinyl and adhered by wet paint become eyes. Ghost-like masks emerge from the physical process of layering and reductive cutting, and grid patterns obliterate and trap the face.

Alongside these portraits are compositions of domestic containers, bottles, and tubes of all shapes and sizes. Outlined by bold reds and blacks, the objects exist within a multi-perspective - almost cubist - space. These compositions, inspired by beauty spreads and advertisements from women’s fashion and wellness magazines, borrow a mode of presentation first pioneered by Vogue photographer, Irving Penn, in the 1950s. Products and clothing are isolated against a white background, and familiar indicators of space and scale are removed. Decontextualized, the objects take on an aura of magic and power.
Reminiscent of Morandi’s earnest still life’s and 17th century Memento Mori paintings, which served to remind people of their mortality, Dumes’ compositions recognize the otherworldly possibilities of mundane, everyday objects. Feminine and bright, Dumes’ paintings have a sinister underbelly. They are about beauty and self-reinvention, and, at the same time, desperation and futility.