What does it mean to be a male painter in the 21st century? What rights and responsibilities does that entail? How does a painter deal with the legacy left by the figures – great for most, toxic for some – that preceded him in art history? My take on historical portraiture is an attempt to answer this question, by laying bare the visual narrative at play in the self-representations left by my predecessors. My love of photography and of the still image, and its relations to painting, has lead me to revisit some of the most iconic images of the medium. In this sense, the work is about appropriating past images and making them mine, regardless of established hierarchies. The approach can be summed up as using art history as a playground instead of a graveyard. A source of images to toy with and take to new directions, rather than a collection of images that should be kept in a glass case.
