Monochromatic Portraits

NEW YORK 05.30.2012 – ContestaRockHair & Contaminate NYC are pleased to present Gate 535’s new exhibition project Monochromatic Portraits (curated by Virginia Villari) , the solo show of Colombian photographer Carolina Montejo who have created a new series of photographs specifically for this exhibition. These images are a reminiscence of an early stage of photography, when photography served to fix memory onto an object. Those devotional items were mainly faded, non-realistic portraits, often retouched with paint precisely to make them look like paintings or watercolors, as photography wasn’t considered Art. These hand-painted portraits greatly inspired the Monochromatic Portraits, a series in which color is the essential element to create a new space based on two different experiences: the outside world and the subject’s subconscious world. As much as the portraits look from a bygone time, there are details such as the characters’ clothes, attitudes and expressions that bring us back to our contemporary everyday life.Carolina’s work emphasizes questions and scenarios based on memory, the subconscious, dreams, and illusion. Her photography responds to her interest in how the brain experiences, stores and reproduces information through mental processes of intangible imagery, unique to each individual’s psyche.