"The Outwin: American Portraiture Today" at the Orlando Museum of Art, Part 2

"In Love with My Best Friend" by Robert Schefman (2019)

"The Outwin: American Portraiture Today" includes a stunning array of portraits in a variety of mediums. A panel of seven experts -- artists, curators, professors -- were tasked with selecting fewer than 50 works from the 2500+ submissions. As is the case in most competitions, the jurors made their selections from images provided by the artists rather than seeing the works in person. While I don't know definitively, it seems that the jurors had access to the artists' statements about their works. These statements provide context and intention and deepen the meaning of what the artist has created. Deciding which works made it into the exhibt must have been an overwhelming task, and different works might well have been chosen on a different day. 

My favorite work in the show was "In Love with My Best Friend" by Robert Schefman. The hyperrealism of this painting is astonishing, and I encourage you to enlarge the image to see the detail, especially the muscularity of the subject's back. The painting came from Schefman's "The Secret Project" series in which he took to social media and asked people to disclose a personal secret. It's a project reminiscent of the book "PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives." The responses flooded in, replete with stories of love and loss and yearning. The respondents also expressed a sense of relief at finally disclosing their closely held feelings, even if it was to a stranger. 

Schefman has taken bits and pieces of people's stories and created an image both mysterious and compelling. Once I moved away from looking at the subject's back, I was struck by the number of dead bouquets of roses hanging from the ceiling. They brought back memories of dried corsages from long ago prom dates and what passed for love and heartbreak in those days. I'd like to know the story behind each component of this work, including why the figure is not only naked but facing the wall as if he's in a time out. For more work from Schefman's "Secret Project," click here. He is a remarkable artist. Even more remarkable to me is the fact that "In Love with My Best Friend" did not win an award in the competition. 

"Dad, at Manmade Pond"
by David Hilliard (2020) (center panel)

I found David Hilliard's triptych "Dad, at Manmade Pond" extremely moving. I wasn't sure at first how it fit with the portraiture theme of the exhibit. But the wall card explained it beautifully, and I will quote from it here. 

"For decades, David Hilliard and his father Raymond collaborated on 'The Dad Series.' The pair had even made plans for what the last image would be, and Raymond had given his son permission to photograph him in his casket. COVID-19 restrictions, however, meant that when Raymond died of the virus in April 2020, he was cremated rather than embalmed. Hilliard, then, placed his father's cremains in a casket-shaped urn and made images in spaces that had been meaningful to his father. 

'Dad at Manmade Pond'...depicts where the artist's father taught him and his brother to swim, canoe and fish... This conceptual portrait conveys the closeness felt between father and son at a time when traditional forms of mourning were brought to a standstill."  

The work is a beautiful tribute by the artist to his father. It's also a heartbreaking reminder of the losses and isolation suffered by so many during the pandemic. I suspect I'm not alone in responding to this work on a personal level. For more of Hilliard's evocative images, click here. 

"Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge,
Morning" by Alison Elizabeth Taylor (2020)

I'll leave you with the work that won First Prize in the competition -- "Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning" by Alison Elizabeth Taylor. This too is an image that came out of the pandemic. 

Early on in the crisis, Taylor and her daughter were walking around their neighborhood in Brooklyn when they came upon an unusual scene. A stylist had set up shop under the Williamsburg Bridge, complete with a mirror hanging on a chain link fence. I would have gladly overlooked the debris for some time with my own hairdresser during that period.

Taylor was struck by the scene not only because of the stylist's ingenuity. It made her think about how salons and barbershops are part of the fabric of our lives. Barbershops in particular are a place where people gather to hang out and talk about what's going on in the neighborhood and the world. Many stylists also serve the role of makeshift therapists. So the shutdown of these places of business meant more than just people losing their livelihood and touching up their own roots. And then there's the fact that this stylist was charging on a donation basis for his haircuts, with the proceeds going to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Again, this is a multi-layered work. 

The way Taylor created "Anthony" is almost as interesting as the story behind it. She has incorporated what she calls "marquetry hybrid" into the piece. As the wall card explained, Taylor used vivid paints, injet prints, and the natural grains of over one hundred veneers to create this image. The wood grain used for the stylist's body was particularly striking. The card elaborates further on the intention behind Taylor's use of wood veneers. "The history of the craft...was favored by Louis XIV when he was acquiring furniture for Versailles. By giving Payne this 'royal treatment,' Taylor aims to pay tribute to him. 'I want him to see how much his example meant to me,' she explained." 

"The Outwin: American Portraiture Today" runs through October 8 at the Orlando Museum of Art. I highly recommend it. To hear some of the jurors and participating artists speak about the exhibit, click here. And to see all of the work in the show, click here. Every work expands to full page, the videos can be streamed and the wall cards are included. It's the next best thing to seeing the show in person.