From 22nd January to 21st February 2015, Art Plural Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Israeli artist Michel Platnic titled After. The intriguing exhibition features his works dubbed 'living paintings'.
Michel Platnic: After is a unique exhibition experience featuring a dramatic series of moving multimedia portraits and prints. Michel Platnic's preoccupation with the human form is vivid in his latest works, where he challenges the boundaries of artistic mediums by merging technology with tradition. In a nod to the work of Francis Bacon, Platnic's 'living paintings' expand on the idea of the portrait by bringing them to life using a combination of photography, video, painting and performance. After painting a scene on a cinema-style set, Platnic then puts himself and his model into this world, painting their faces and body with bold strokes of paint in the style of Bacon's painterly yet abstract portraits. The result is unexpected: projected videos of the portraits seem entirely static upon first glance, until one notices the gentle raising of the chest as the subject breathes, the dart of the eye as it follows the viewer around the room, and the careful tilt of the head. Ultimately, Platnic's portraits break free from the existentialist torment that Bacon expressed in his work, allowing an interactive environment where the subject of a 'painting' can exist within its structure and seize the life that it is given.
