Aesthetics — tylerpayne

Aesthetics

The Image Looks Backs

RMIT Gallery 2020

Aesthetics + Keeping Time + #doitfortheafterselfie

Aesthetics (In Front of the Mirror)

After Władysław Czachórsk

© Tyler Payne 2020

iPad, moving image and timber 23cm x 36cm

What are the moral consequences of women engaging in self-portraiture today?
Tyler Payne

Aesthetics (Woman in the Mirror)

After Paul Delvaux

© Tyler Payne 2020

iPad, moving image and timber 36cm x 23cm

Garden of KKW

© Tyler Payne 2020 Electro bri-collage animation

21 seconds (excerpt clip)

Aesthetics examines the quote by the late art critic John Berger, reflecting on the role of the male gaze in the history of constructions of aesthetic value in Western art:

You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting ‘Vanity’, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.

Aesthetics engages with this deeply-rooted tradition in Western artmaking by appropriating diverse male artists’ contributions to the genre of the female nude. The outcome of this tradition has been to cement women’s role as the self-conscious sex, and to assert male artists’ dominance as controller of cultural representation’s of women’s bodies. Aesthetics engages this tradition in the contemporary moment. Is the new popularity of the selfie, and social media, indicative of an intensifying culture of vanity

Into the mirror of this tradition, Kim Kardashian gazes back. There is every reason to suspect she is the personification of the vice of ‘vanity’ in the contemporary moment. Kardashian has raised self-consciousness to the level of a life’s vocation.

What are the moral consequences of women engaging in self-portraiture today?

Aesthetics (Rokeby Venus)

After Diego Velázquez

© Tyler Payne 2020

iPad, moving image and timber 36cm x 23cm

It took three days to download videos of Kim Kardashian to match with paintings by men depicting vanity (a woman and reflection). Aesthetics is made up of moving images, iPads and custom built antique frames.
Tyler Payne

Aesthetics (Woman at a Mirror)

After Theo van Rysellberghe

© Tyler Payne 2020

iPad, moving image and timber 36cm x 23cm