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Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf
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Degree: BA (Hons) Fine Art
University: Surrey Institute of Art and Design
Graduation Year: 2004
New Blood Art Statement
Fontaine-Wolf is an artist of great technical ability, tact and an instinct so sure and refined that her work can afford to be as much about what she leaves out as what she gives existence to in the final work. A fine balance between the extremes of the photo-realistic and the expressionist; polished fullness and the flatness of a blank canvas, the resulting paintings retain the rawness of a work that seems to have been born in front of you. This dialectic between the tamed and the wild finds its thematic echo in the notion of femininity and the expectations of beauty that Wolf presents and evaluates.
View: Window into the world of Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf
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Artist Statement
"The power of images, especially portraiture has been a compelling force in my life on many levels. Since my fathers passing when I was very young the images I had of him seemed to have an almost mystical power. They seemed to be able to suspend time, to capture a moment of beauty and crystallise it. To me images have the ability to turn ordinary people into icons, to encapsulate all their beauty whilst erasing any trace of a banal or negative day to day existence. They have served me as a form of escapism, whether drawing idealised female characters as a child or looking at images of impossibly airbrushed beauties in magazines as an adult. They allow me to slip into an inverted form of nostalgia, not for an idealised past but an alternate reality, a fantasy self. There is a yearning for unity and perfection which all to often is laced with sadness because of the knowledge that this perfection can never be achieved.Since I can remember my artwork has primarily revolved around the subject of female beauty, image and identity, and has allowed me to explore my feelings of sadness, vulnerability but also strength and defiance connected to this subject. On the other side of the escapist fantasy lies a sense of entrapment. It’s as if the subject is stuck behind and image or an ideal, trapped in the self- unable to truly connect with another, unable to escape their own body and lastly, trapped in the painting itself where the subject remains frozen for all eternity, knowingly gazing out at the viewer confronting them with their own mortality.
The experimentation with translucency, present throughout my whole body of work in some form or another, allows this back and forth between fantasy and reality to gain shape. It allows the illusion of painting itself to become visible by exposing it’s process whilst revealing the illusions of the subject depicted - seeing through the façade – seeing the multitude of layers which make up the individual rather than just the surface, end product. Perhaps it sees through the image being projected - through the ideals and the fantasy.
Images allow me to toy with the void between fantasy and reality and as such my work allows me to give expression to and attempt to reconcile this void and explore the ways in which dreams and reality have the potential to turn into one another."
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Selected Solo Exhibitions
2012, Eliza the gallery Group show, 27 Cork street, London
2012, The NOAC Winners show, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
2012, The Scaffolding series part 2, 10 Grosvenor str. Mayfair, London
2011,The Scaffolding series, The Meller Merceux Gallery
2009, The Alopecia Series, The Red Gate Gallery, London
2008, Art Below, Leicester Square Underground, London
2006, Direct Introspective, The International, London
2003, Nudes, Tearoom des Artistes, London
Selected Group Exhibitions
2013, Cork Street Open Exhibition for Charity, 28 Cork Street, juried group show, London
2013, Tender, Group show, Gallery Different, Fitzrovia
2012 Eliza the gallery Group show, 27 Cork Street, London
2012, National Open Art Competition, The Prince's Drawing School, London
2012, Society of Women Artists, The Mall Galleries, London
2012, National Open Art Competition, Minerva Theatre, Chichester,
2012, Mothers, Group show, Contemporary Art Space Chester, Chester
2012, Art Erotica, Juried show, Cork Street, London
2011, The Affordable Art Fair, London
2011, Society of Women Artists, The Mall Galleries, London
2011, Show Me The Monet! - Finalist in the BBC2 art show
2011, The Henry Moore Gallery at the RCA, London, March
2010, 40 Years of Page 3, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
2010, The Art Of Living, CAW gallery pop up exhibition London
2010, Juried Group Show, Cork Street Open Exhibition for Charity, London
2010, Juried Group Show, Society of Women Artists, The Mall Galleries, London
2010, Summer Salon, Islington Art Factory, London
2010, June Exhibition, Hollywood Gallery, London
2009, British Art in the XXI Century, The Opera Gallery, Budapest
2009, London versus New York, Group show, Studios LIC, New York, USA
2009, Juried Group Show Autumn Exhibition, NYAXE Gallery, California, USA
2009, Society of Women Artists, The Mall Galleries, London
2008, The Heirs of Whistler,The Chelsea Gallery, London
2008, Cork Street Open Exhibition for Charity, Cork Street, London
2008, Group Show, Chelsea Old Town Hall, London
2008, HinkyPunk,The Paintworks, Bristol
2007, Spectacles of the Metropolis with the Zooks Art Collective, Spitz Gallery, London
2007, daydream, Saatchi& Saatchi
2006, Daydream, Group Show for magazine Launch
2006, knowing me knowing you, Chelsea Arts Club, London
2005, Art in Mind, 81 Rivington Street, London
2005, Group Show, The Headstreet Gallery, London
AWARDS
2012 The Catherine Petitgas Visitors Award Chichester (NOAC)
2011 Winsor & Newton Young Artists Award (SWA)
2011 Winner/Finalist in BBC ‘Show me the Monet’
2009 Finalist for the London Calling Competition at the Scream Gallery