A Current Past is a collage by the internationally renowned artist Barbara Nessim, which merges classical forms with elements of modern desires. It is the central piece from the series
Chronicles of Beauty. The artist uses bare, unadorned Greco-Roman busts as androgynous archetypes and embellishes them with contemporary accoutrements, accessories and expressions of sensuality. Scatterings of precious gems, riches, and shelter, in the form of architectural details, float across a backdrop of marble cloth. In areas the veneer is broken, as though excavated to reveal hidden traces of the underlying passage of time. The masks are interchangeable, and yet the figures retain their immortal, immutable qualities, imbued as they are with the timelessness of human yearnings.
This work of art, 28 ft in length, is a maquette for a permanent installation that is to be printed on aluminum.
Chronicles of Beauty, an extension of The Model Project, was commissioned for Eventi, a Kimpton Hotel, opening in Spring 2010.
The Model Project, is a two-year endeavor by artist Barbara Nessim in association with a model and photographer that began originally as a series of large scale drawings done in real-time during a fashion photo-shoot. Since then the work has evolved, and the artist has used the resulting photographs as inspiration for collages that explore historical notions of beauty and fashion. As a series, the figures draw from both modern and classical archetypes, and the artist remakes the model’s face, forging whole gestures out of curves, squares and rectangular slices of cutouts from magazines that portray women in fashion.
The cutout elements that make up the composite are kept to a minimum and carefully chosen and positioned to transform the model’s identity in dramatic ways. Though the focus on jewelry in particular is feminine, the portraits have a metallic, asexual quality that sets the viewer as voyeur, a reminder that fashion is advertising.
Nessim explores the industry-prescribed attributes of beauty by dissecting the fixtures of femininity, and in some instances the collages appear disturbing in their mélange of deconstructed parts. The reflective quality of the aluminum adds opulence and ethereality to the finished pieces and completes this eloquent collaboration between artist and photographer.
Kiša Lala
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