La Cage et l’immortalité puissante 2022

Sandra Chevrier made this painting, La Cage et l’immortalité puissante, from mixed media, with a blend of collage and paint that creates this push-and-pull effect. The flat comic book graphics are juxtaposed against the softer, more modeled rendering of the face beneath. It's a striking combination, and I'm really drawn to the area around the eyes, where the hyper-realism of the painted eyes meets the jagged edges of the collaged comic book pages. It makes me think about how identities are constructed and layered, mixing fantasy with reality. The materiality of the comic book pages, with their pulp paper and bold colors, contrasts with the smoother, almost porcelain-like texture of the painted face. The effect is kind of unnerving. Chevrier's work reminds me a bit of early Dada collage or even some of Hannah Höch’s photomontages, where fragmented images are used to question and disrupt conventional representations. These are artworks that embrace multiplicity and ambiguity.