"Lou!" Fine Art by Marie Obegi

"Lou!" is the title of this piece which is ink on slate, in a custom frame. Part of a larger series: Minuit Bleu/A Tale of Ending Romances, originally presented at the Carriage House Center. 13" x 13"

Parisian artist Marie Obegi settled in New York in 2010. After designing several collections of high heels for the company she successfully co-founded, she decided to focus entirely on the fine art world. Following her graduation from Parsons School of Design in New York, Marie devoted herself to creating a universe in which each work of art captures the subject's more ambiguous facets, adding a narrative dimension to what is immediately visible.

Our era marks the absolute reign of portraits. We are constantly sharing and diffusing portraits of one another, primarily digitally. The reflection that develops around these pictures requires us to move away from reality, staging a fantasy vision of our own identity.

Though the dystopian prediction that we will eventually exist only as a number is still far away, it is in this vein that Marie Obegi embarked on an exploration of this specific, digital genre,working only with images found on social media platforms, like Instagram and Facebook. The result is a series of portraits with dark tones and a decidedly modern twist. Marie Obegi juggles brushes, blows, superimpositions, and transparency effects.

However, those represented are never fully embodied. Because these portraits are deconstructed. Indeed, they are fragmented, deconstructed, and then reassembled, giving rise to a fractured portrait. As soon as the picture of these individuals begins to sketch itself on the retina and the brain, the technical process of Marie Obegi immediately cracks our representation. The face thus appears to be a perfect support for experimentation and deconstruction.

This undermining of individual self-representation offers the viewer an aesthetic pleasure, as much as a reflection on our relationship to the image, more specifically our own. http://www.marieobegi.com/