10 Mysterious Faces Partially Obscured By Enamel Mark Oliver Jeffers’ Dipped Painting Project
“Can something be described as beautiful if no one ever sees it?” was the question that sparked a series of performances in which Oliver Jeffers dipped his fully painted portraits into vats of enamel paint, a process that permanently obscures parts of each portrait’s features. The idea emerged quite by accident when, a year after an early dipping experiment, he compared his memory of a painting with a photograph of the original and found that the two did not match. This inconsistency in memory fascinated him, and he officially launched the project in 2012.
Oliver Jeffers will now present his ongoing dipped painting series in North America in his first focused show, and he plans to conclude the series by 2027, following a two-year wind-down period. The performance-art component of the project takes place in front of a select group of invitees, as oil portraits in antique frames are dipped into colourful paint. Only these guests see the artwork in its original state, and afterwards the image lives solely in their memories. There is no documentation, no video or photographs, of the undipped portraits. The only record of their original appearance is held in the recollections of the small group of witnesses who attend each private dipping performance.
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