Harper’s is happy to announce Independence Day, Irish artist Genieve Figgis’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation options new works by Figgis and opens July 5, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.
Working with wealthy acrylics, Genieve Figgis attracts from eighteenth-century artwork historic traditions to subvert portraits of luxurious and leisure. With fanciful mark-making and dulcet palettes, the artist’s type evokes the class and decadence of the Rococo interval. Figgis, nonetheless, inflects her lavish scenes with chilling and humorous components. Amidst these works, one would possibly spot ghastly figuration: the faces of Figgis’s upper-class protagonists usually dissolve into macabre silhouettes, like apparitions haunting shadowy corridors. And inside extra risqué works, her topics strike provocative poses as they proudly gallivant in states of undress.
Imaginary Household, for instance, is a parlor tableau warped into phantasmagoric extra. Right here, a procession of distorted figures stands in opposition to a Georgian façade composed of sanguine pinks and murky mauves, just like the fading wallpaper in a long-abandoned manor. Gathered round a pram and wearing extravagant finery—ruffled sleeves, bonnets, parasols, and tailor-made coats—the themes seem as costumed nobles caught in a shadowy masquerade. Like wax effigies left too near warmth, their facial options grow to be indiscernible: they soften into unfastened brushstrokes that rework their regal poise right into a menacing sight.
In different works, like Room with a Canine and In Mattress, Figgis pays shut consideration to inside area, depicting the ostentatious residing quarters of yesteryear’s aristocracy. The artist’s ornamental brushwork takes middle stage within the former: swirly pastels type beautiful chandeliers and opulent curtains. Although devoid of the human determine, one can think about an heiress reclining on the striped chaise lounge, leaning into the resplendent grandeur of the leisure class. Within the latter, Figgis levels a rosy cover mattress in the course of a master suite; a human cranium overlooks the scene from atop a luxurious pillow in quiet repose.
Finally, Figgis is adept at converging contradicting aesthetics of decadence and decay, reimagining the genteel imagery of eighteenth-century portraiture by a important lens. Her compositions seduce with lush palettes and home areas, solely to unsettle with eerie distortions and darkish humor. By fusing historic opulence with ghostly figuration, Figgis questions the permanence of wealth, magnificence, and energy. Independence Day invitations viewers to linger between these worlds of refinement and damage, for it’s right here the place splendor turns into a bittersweet pressure.
