Agnes b. Librairie Galerie
Ends April 28
How much can you read about a person from looking at their face or portrait? Is it a road map to their psyche and persona? Or can people disguise their real intentions, feelings and character by erecting a facade of facial muscles - in effect blocking others from knowing their true self?
Two Faced - The Changing Face of Portraiture is a melding of traditional and experimental styles by artists from the US, Britain, Germany, Spain, Japan, France and Switzerland. Divided into two sections, Showcase and Two Faced, the exhibition comprises more than 50 posters displayed around the white-on-white Agnes b. Librairie Galerie.
The originals are inks, marker drawings, computer graphics, spray paintings and mixed-media works that were created for a project book of the same name. This exhibition of the works of toy designers, illustrators and art directors makes its first stop in Hong Kong, and will then move on to New York and possibly Tokyo, London and Paris.
In Showcase, artists depict celebrities such as Diana, Princess of Wales, Bruce Lee, Madonna and Bob Dylan. Michael Gillette's watercolour evokes sadness - the more so because his subject is the late Kurt Cobain. Part of his Little Angels series, depicting people who achieve fame and die early, Gillette's portrait of a blue-eyed blond kid with a faint smile has the innocence of most 10-year olds. However, the recollection of Cobain's suicide is transposed onto the face of this all-American boy.