Cecilia resisted becoming an artist for a long time, but in the end she realized that she was just rebelling against her family. They encouraged her painting. She says she was always busy drawing something as a child and always had her best marks in art classes with not much of effort. She opted for something more challenging: natural science. However, she found herself painting in all of her free time and picking art classes. It was then that she really noticed how much she enjoys it and couldn’t imagine herself doing anything else.
Life took Cecilia from Sweden to Australia and she started her studies in Fine Art in Perth. “The most isolated and the sunniest city in the world,” Cecilia says. In Perth the base of her current technique of painting formed: having four colours and applying one at a time instead of using a pallet to mix all the colours. Cecilia compares her style of painting with a printer in terms of applying each colour in separate layers. She really wants to extract all the colours that you see on the skin so they lay on the top of each other, like how the impressionists did. This is how she avoids painting dull or flat bodies. Her self-limitations gave her the challenge to go for painting meatier and fleshier instead of plastic images.
photos by PILOTENKUECHE International Art Program
Painting nudes was always one of Cecilia’s favourites. Jenny Saville is a painter that Cecilia admires. She believes her journey from Sweden to Australia, and the difference of the attitudes towards nudity in these two country triggered something in her. As well she secretly laughs at the fact that she like to give a little back to women who paint nudes
She started looking at nudes in advertisements in more detail. How are they getting away with that much of nudity? Commercially being beautiful. but at the same time pale and innocent and not erotic. So she decided to take normal people and put them in perfect posing of advertisement. but not with the porcelain airbrush look. Instead they are fleshy and real. This was for her the indication that people are still beautiful despite the real magenta and green shadows their skin naturally have.
Another concept that Cecilia is playing around is that what happens when a man poses in a feminine way or even a trans woman poses in a masculine way. What is man? What is woman? Where is the line in this spectrum? Plus, the fact that masculine and feminine codes change throughout history. “There is a lot of gender attached to the pose, and the way someone act and the body language,” Cecilia says.
The fact that advertisement is selling sex doesn’t draw Cecilia to it. At the same time she acknowledges that it takes talent to create such a beautiful visual thing. She is also fascinated that contemporary advertisements are being more inclusive and representative with different shapes of body and skin colours. The ads she uses are generally from the 90s.
Come see how Cecilia crushes gender borders with her paintings. You will see her self-portrait posing like a male Calvin Klein perfume advertisement model and a trans woman posing as Eva Mendez in the final show of round 41.
Written by Elnaz Mostaan
images supplied by artist
You can find Cecilia’s art works in her website.
Reset unsettling flesh layers / vernissage / PK at AHS
Friday, 15. November 2019
19:00 bis 22:00
Alte Handelsschule, Gießerstraße 75, Kleinzschocher, 04229 Leipzig, Deutschland
Overwhelmed incorporeal happiness / vernissage / PK RD41
Saturday, 14. December 2019
19:00 – 22:00
Press while here at Pilotenkueche:
MEDIUM
Beyond ‘Hypezig’: Connecting international artists in eastern Germany
by Benedict Tetzlaff-Deas
PILOTENKEUCHE, Franz-Flemming-Straße 9, 04179 Leipzig