Adriana Oliver’s Modern Love Story

Each image is reduced to only the most essential elements - the hair is just one shape with a few strategically placed highlights - yet the effect is striking, conveying much more information to the viewer. Oliver assembles her own lexicon of art historical themes, utilizing key concepts from various periods and genres to create her own unique set of visual vocabulary.

“I wanted to focus more about the emotions and feelings of what a portrait can transmit to the audience, instead of reducing everything to an identity. Executing it with simple lines, shapes and geometries,” says Oliver.

Employing a minimalist figurative aesthetic, Oliver’s signature “cutout” style often explores classical representations of femininity and masculinity, as seen through iconography of suits and ties or heels and dresses. Her early study of photography is evident in her framing of the picture plane, and liberal use of flat shapes and negative space. In her use of hue, intensity and value, the works attain depth and resonance, striking a perfect balance between message and form.

Drawing on romanticism and cinematographic narratives reminiscent of the 50’s and 60’s, Oliver’s new series chronicles a couple’s courtship. Intended as an ongoing narrative, each painted panel addresses the story of the figures while distinctively defining the space around them.

“This series is a representation of a love story,” Oliver explains. “I decided to introduce the characters in the most unusual and intimate situation- through interiors. I represented the man by himself and you can interpret he is waiting, missing, or thinking about someone. The second panel is the interior of an empty house. There are no characters, but there is a powerful picture of the wedding day, showing the emotions and excitement of the day.”

Replete with drama and intensity, Oliver’s unusual portraits tell the intimacies of her figures’ relationship while remaining intentionally coy. Merging form and content, her linear constructions exemplify the expressive potential of line while leaving the viewer to decipher each scene.