Chloe Wise

Imbued in Chloe Wise’s art practice is a distinct and delightful derision and self-deprecating parody. Spanning diverse media such as painting, sculpture, video and installation, her work explores the multiple channels that lead to the construction of a Self. The tools of self-representation, publicity, fashion, commercial brands and all that combine to create one’s identity become subject to a potential teasing. They thus underline just how much humour and parody can generate an insightful and sharp critique of the world, and specifically the authority of the media in the digital paradigm. She paints her close friends, exploring themes of representation, identity and subject-object relationships. In doing so, Wise adds an element that supports her particular way of connecting her work to her private life. She thus evokes the porosity of the borders between the workplace and domesticity but also approaches the representation of friendship and privacy and the limitations imposed on this narrative by portraiture. We find the de-facto political aspect of the portraitist’s act, her sharing of her reality as a New York female artist who chooses her subjects – brought together first due to belonging to the same generation and cultural community and then based on a more intimate bond: their friendship with Chloe Wise and her act of painting. Wise invites us to experience an abundance of rich food through the meticulously hand-painted casts that serve as the base for her sculptural practice. Reflecting a consumerist society in which the “forbidden fruit,” like so many guilty pleasures, is fetishized yet revered, these sculptures stand as an embodiment of temptation. Contrary to what they represent – perishable food, destined to decomposition – these strange assemblies, now frozen in sculpted plastic, toy with the presence and absence of unchangeability and perishability, fiction and reality.