The exhibition The Centerfold Series & Figures by artist Andrea Szilasi begins this week at Galerie Joyce Yahouda.

The collages of Szilasi’s Figures series use a deceptively simple method: take a photographic portrait, cut some chunks out of the face, and then glue them back in an inverted order. The resulting images range from fun-house mirror to grotesque, but they always retain the essential characteristic of the person’s face. This creative puzzle-process questions what the human face means to us, and how much can be changed before we loose all reference to the individual. The artist’s Centerfold Series also uses the collage process, this time using real 1950s Playboy centerfolds. Szilasi pastes random commercial images onto the heavily retouched female nudes, making a reference to the artificial nature of the pin-up girl photographs. This overlay of images also creates a peek-a-boo effect which captured the imagination of at least some of the art-lovers at Saturday’s vernissage…

Galerie Joyce Yahouda
space 516
Andrea Szilasi
The Centerfold Series & Figures
exhibition period: May 3 – 31, 2008
www.joyceyahoudagallery.com