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Manuel Mathieu Haiti, b. 1986
Autoportrait 11/21, 2021Acrylic, oil stick, chalk, charcoal, and tape on canvas75 x 80 x 2 in
190.5 x 203.2 x 5.1 cm8248Further images
This self-portrait by Manuel Mathieu reflects the artist’s interest in memory and personal history as a way of mapping the internal landscape of the mind. The image hovers in a...This self-portrait by Manuel Mathieu reflects the artist’s interest in memory and personal history as a way of mapping the internal landscape of the mind. The image hovers in a visual space between figuration and abstraction. Our will towards pareidolia invites us to construct the form of a face with eyes, while Mathieu’s other aesthetic interests in texture, brush stroke, impasto vs. flat surfaces, and the embedded meaning of mixed mediums, are free to express a range of other concerns in the periphery.
The clouded, amorphous, almost liquid appearance of this image is a potent signifier of Mathieu’s awareness that identity is a fluid and ephemeral thing, connecting to events and places and people that no longer exist, and were, at best, subjectively experienced and fragmented in our memory in the first place.
“The elements creating and contributing to our environment become the landscape of our minds,” Mathieu says, “and potentially end up only existing in our imagination.”
