In A Romantic Fashion

Taking sophisticated approaches to the undeniably complex and rich subject of humanity, Mixed Media artist Jane Maxwell and Photorealist painter Pedro Bonnin create work that emphasizes the movement of the human figure. Including defining elements of fashion, style and design, Maxwell and Bonnin work in vastly different stylistic approaches and mediums while touching on common motifs of Romanticism such as identity, perception, and individuality.

Favoring imagery with flowing dresses and the female body, their captured moments allow for an unfolding synthesis of past and present, emotion and discourse. Utilizing found printed matter in ways which imitate the hard-edged graphic look of branded apparel, Maxwell tempers any signifying insignia with the flowing lines of her silhouettes. Navigating the ideas of personal agency, the feminine ideal, and body image, the silhouette is the primary mode of portrayal as the figures stride through undefined space.

Dissecting the narratives of perception, Pedro Bonnin’s uninhibited figures float, leap, and turn through their undefined settings. Showing articles of status and fashion statements as markers of identity, he explores a full range of both emotion and emotion while maintaining a vivid sense of individuality and physical presence.

In a society marked by increasing mobility and waning social bonds, a new yearning for intimacy prevails. Taking up a thread of the Romantic spirit, Maxwell and Bonnin explore heightened emotional states and the desire for the paradisiacal and beautiful. Also including the subversive tenor of transcending limitations we find in the poeticization of the world, their romantic approaches transform in a variety of lines and strategies of appropriations that aim at reviving a gamut of motifs of self expression and self exploration.