VOLTE FACE

Mike Par­r’s new instal­la­tion of four­teen bronze-cast, nick­­el-plat­ed heads, VOLTE FACE, uses a com­bi­na­tion of moulds of pre­vi­ous self-por­­traits, with new neg­a­tive­ly mod­elled​‘blind’ self-por­­traits to rad­i­cal­ly shift the out­come. The artist’s own archive is again the sub­stance for new work, a point of depar­ture, and a feed­back loop. The sit­ing dis­places and inverts a pre­vi­ous exhi­bi­tion, with the new sculp­tures installed direct­ly above where their coun­ter­parts were 25 years ago (Bronze Liars, 1996, Anna Schwartz Gallery).​“I’m con­tin­u­ing my research­es into the end of the self-por­­trait image and the notion of​‘blind­ness’… the end of the image as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion… and all those uncon­scious forces that swirl in the vicin­i­ty of mat­ter itself… I feel that nick­el plat­ing​‘puts the image to sleep’… abstract/​alienate it fur­ther as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I want the whole ensem­ble to seem like the after­math of a performance.”