Prisoner 1

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Title

Prisoner 1

Description

“OUT’SIGHT” is partly the work of Sylvain Malfroy-Camine’s honors project in his final year as an undergraduate student at UMass Boston, and partly work produced as a result of his journey to Venice and Europe this summer as recipient of the Ruth Butler Scholarship. This painting series is an investigation of the subjective experience of location. With context blocked out, the only reference to specific location is in how the site-specific light is evidenced in the sitter’s features. This notion of surfaces within the painting, however, is fiercely challenged by the frequent use of obstructions over the eyes of the self-portrait. There is no location, there is only a record of it.

From the artist: When children are still very young, they are constantly learning how to negotiate the physical world. A game of peek-a-boo can be great fun, maybe because to a small child, it is not clear what exists behind the hider’s tricky hands. In stride with this innocent sense for absence, these paintings challenge illusion and what happens to an image (a self portrait), when its most expressive elements are no longer visible. In most of these paintings, the artist, a white male in three-quarters portrait pose, is ‘de-centralized’ by interruptions of abstract shapes; and while there is a violence in that juxtaposition, the prevailing notion is not of self-destruction, but of self-effacement.

Acknowledgements: The artist would like to thank his honors project committee who are: Profs. Victoria Weston, Elizabeth Marran, and Christopher Schade. Thanks also to Samuel Toabe, Manuela DaCosta, Carol Scollans, Lorenzo Buonanno and especial thanks to Ruth Butler.


Work done as a student at UMass Boston; UMB Student artwork; UMass Boston Student art work from 2015; UMass Boston Student Artwork

Creator

Malfroy-Camine, Sylvain (UMass Boston Student artist, active 2014-17)

Date

2017

Rights

© 2017 Sylvain Malfroy-Carmine

Format

Acrylic on canvas
11 x 14 in

Citation

Malfroy-Camine, Sylvain (UMass Boston Student artist, active 2014-17), “Prisoner 1,” UMB Student Artwork, accessed March 28, 2024, https://umbstudentart.omeka.net/items/show/130.

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