Irvine Contemporary Art Gallery: Alexa Meade

The Irvine Gallery features work from early to mid-career artists as well as a select group of artists for the interested collectors. As a full service gallery they focus on assisting collectors from varying experiences. They also "provide art advising and consulting, art appraisals, private resales, and lectures and informational events on contemporary art, art collecting, and the art market"

Mission Statement: while the gallery has no explicitly written mission statement I gather from reading about the gallery and the various services they offer and highlight one of their main purposes is to provide a forum for artist who are not necessarily famous, but somewhat established to take their success to the next level. Along with this they provide full services for budding and experienced collectors. The gallery essentially brings together in a very successful way artists and collectors

ALEXA MEADE
A 23 year old artist living and working in DC

Artist Statement:
(taken from her website) "Meade’s approach to portraiture questions our understanding of the body and identity. Meade coats her models with a mask of paint, obscuring the body while intimately exposing it, creating an unflinchingly raw account of the person. The painted second skin perceptually dissolves the body into a 2D caricature. The subjects become art objects as they are transformed into re-interpretations of themselves. In turn, the models’ identities become altered by their newskin, embodying Meade’s dictated definition of their image to the viewer."

Thoughts:
Looking at this artist work at first glance may not seem that intriguing, perhaps just a well painted portrait. Looking closer you see that the portraits are actual live people painted to resemble 2D images.
What I like about this artists is that her work exists in different layers for the viewer to interact with. There is a sculptural element with the installation of a constructed room with a live person which actually invades the viewers space and forces some sort of interaction. There is a performance aspect of her work, which in a beautiful way exist ephemerally, the work only exist as long as the subject is a part of it. It is washed away and recreated in another setting with another model.
When I was looking at this piece I thought about what was said in the first meeting that the works in stamp largely dealt with the idea of identity in a way I think this work references it as well, not necessarily the artist identity, but a universal concept of identity..is it fleeting,constantly changing, evolving, and essentially recreating itself?