All The Way Down 2018

Curator: My initial impression is one of fragmented identity. It's striking how the portrait is both present and dissolving. Editor: Indeed. We're looking at "All The Way Down" by Martine Johanna, an acrylic painting from 2018. The piece features a woman holding an apple, rendered in a style that blends portraiture with neo-expressionist abstraction. Curator: That apple is instantly recognizable as an archetype. Is it temptation? Knowledge? Innocence lost? Its radiant, almost luminous quality set against the darker abstract forms pulls me in. Editor: Absolutely. It is hard not to view the object outside a political or historical framework. Apples appear frequently in modern art during periods of social change as a powerful symbol of renewal but sometimes destruction, a common theme after 2010. Curator: And what about the jagged shapes surrounding her? To me, they could represent psychological barriers, or even societal pressures bearing down on the individual. They seem to encroach upon her personal space, fracturing her sense of self. The use of layered images suggests the internal life versus the self as we project it. Editor: I agree, these abstractions could represent how modern capitalist institutions are reshaping ideas of identity in the post-digital age. These hard-edge elements hint at pop art influences too, with their flattened planes of color and sharp outlines. It certainly reflects a larger trend within contemporary art to integrate abstraction and familiar shapes. Curator: You have that right. The abstraction feels visceral and unsettling. It is reminiscent of the internal struggles in portraits by Frida Kahlo, who embraced painful, visible imagery to confront and ultimately find liberation. Editor: It will be interesting to see if future scholars read her images as historical records of identity politics and social class during our time. Perhaps one day it will reflect something to a new audience like Van Gogh. Curator: I appreciate Johanna’s bravery in showing a fractured identity within her contemporary vision of symbolic neo-expressionism. It leaves me contemplating the various aspects of our hidden interior. Editor: Precisely. Art provokes these questions for generations. I imagine that “All the Way Down” has many levels left to unearth in due time.