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(Alison Elizabeth Taylor, “Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning”, 2020 Marquetry hybrid (wood veneers, oil paint, acrylic paint, inkjet prints, shellac, and sawdust on wood)

Currently at Orlando Museum of Art is The Outwin: American Portraiture Today, an impressive collection of work in a variety of mediums.

From the museum’s website-

Launched in 2006 to support the next wave of contemporary portraiture in the United States, the National Portrait Gallery’s celebrated triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition is a major survey of the best American portraiture selected by internationally prominent jurors and curators. Now in its sixth edition, The Outwin: American Portraiture Today presents 42 works selected from over 2,700 entries, that foreground the vibrancy and relevance of portraiture today. In addition to paintings, photographs, drawings, and sculptures, The Outwin includes video, performance art, and textiles, highlighting the limitless possibilities of contemporary portraiture.

Open to both emerging and established artists, this year’s entrants were encouraged to submit work that moves beyond traditional definitions of portraiture, and to explore a portrait’s ability to engage with the social and political landscape of our time. The variety of media and subjects featured in the exhibition invite audiences of all backgrounds to find relation in the human experience.

Since its inception, finalists for the exhibition have been determined by a panel of jurors including three Portrait Gallery staff members and four external professionals (critics, art historians, artists). The competition is endowed by and named for Virginia Outwin Boochever (1920 – 2005) who, for 19 years, volunteered as a docent at the Portrait Gallery. Her commitment to advancing the art of portraiture is continued through the support of her children.

Below are a selection of works from the show and information about them from the museum.

Alison Elizabeth Taylor– Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning, 2020 (pictured above)

On walks around her Brooklyn neighborhood during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Alison Elizabeth Taylor encountered the hair groomer Anthony Payne, who,with his workplace shuttered, had taken his scissors, mirror, and chair to the streets. Payne sought to financially support the Black Lives Matter movement, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, and turned over proceeds from his donation-based haircuts to organizations advocating for social justice.

Taylor’s process, one she developed and named “marquetry hybrid,” incorporates vivid paints, inkjet prints, and the natural grains of over one hundred veneers. Marquetry, with its inlaid combination of woods, can “memorialize,” Taylor notes. She acknowledges the history of the craft, which was favored by Louis XIV (1654-1715) when he was acquiring furniture for Versailles. By giving Payne this “royal treatment,” Taylor aims to pay tribute to him. ”I want him to see how much his example meant to me,” she explained.

Kira Nam Greene– Kyung’s Gift in Pojagi (From the series “Women in Possession of Good Fortune”), 2019, Oil, gouache, colored pencil, and acrylic ink on canvas

In this mixed-media work, by Kira Nam Greene, the artist Kyung Jeon faces us with relaxed self-assurance. She is carefully positioned on her couch as her long black hair falls over her orange and turquoise tunic. In the foreground, a wooden cylinder containing paint brushes reveals her medium of choice. A plate with persimmons, consumed during the harvest festival Chuseok to celebrate good fortune, brims with potential while the rest of the painting pulsates with action.

Greene situates her friend in a fantasy world that echoes Jeon’s artwork and their mutual interest in the traditional Korean fabric quilting technique of pojagi. Two rabbits, representing Jeon’s Chinese zodiac, appear to be concocting a potion. Flowers sprout as kaleidoscopic patterns envelop her. The reference to pojagi, the visible paint drips in the background painting, and the hands of the sitter- left unfinished- invoke the role of tradition, process, and exploration in artmaking.

Stuart Robertson– Self Portrait of the Artist from the Out and Bad series, 2020, Aluminum, earth, acrylic paint, enamel, paper,metallic bubble wrap, sequins, and gold foil on wood

“In my world, skin is high-tech, amorphous, and armored,” the artist Stuart Robertson observes. “Blackness is percussive, lustrous, flexible, and indestructible.” Self-Portrait of the Artist depicts a fragment of a man- half of his face and his upper torso-shiny and monumental. A black beard delineates his jaw, and a small gold hoop adorns his ear. Although the figure is cropped beyond recognition, the work’s title provides a clue.

Through the alternation of flat and repoussé aluminum sheets, Robertson achieves a hypnotic effect, a poignant tension playing on what he reveals or hides from us viewers. His refusal to depict his entire face or figure challenges the notion of what a portrait should be and blocks the objectification of the Black male body, so often sexualized in visual culture. Simultaneously, Robertson delivers an irrepressible, resplendent image of that body, one inspired by the aesthetics of Jamaica’s dancehall culture.

Vincent Valdez– People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana), 2019, Oil on canvas

An elderly couple faces us with the gentle authority that old age provides. People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana) is a portrait of Vincent Valdez’s maternal grandparents. “My grandparents spent most of their time outside,” the artist recalled. “Grandpa spent his entire life working under the blazing Texas sun as a carpenter and yard worker, cutting lawns in the wealthy communities of San Antonio right up until he passed away. Grandma was constantly working with her hands–raising kids, washing, sewing clothes, and tending the plants in her yard.”

The Santanas are depicted in a space defined by details the artist remembers: their vintage AM radio, their plants, their homemade clothes. The bedsheet, like the Virgen de Guadalupe’s aura, signals their spiritual role in the family. This portrait connects the pair to the Indigenous and mestizo cultures of the American Southwest, including the Aztec and Maya, who honored the sun.

Elsa María Meléndez– Milk, 2020, Canvas with silkscreen, embroidery, ink, and other textiles

Elsa María Meléndez routinely crosses the boundaries between artistic mediums in large-scale artworks that command space and attention. Combining silkscreen, drawing, and various needlework techniques, Milk portrays the artist charging forward, determined. She carries a limp bull and advances while her breasts drip glistening drops of milk.

Created six months into the COVID-19 lockdown, this artwork encapsulates Meléndez’s reflection on the fight for gender equality in Puerto Rico. As people went into quarantine, gender violence escalated around the world. In Puerto Rico, where femicides increased substantially, feminist organizations took to the streets, demanding that the government declare a state of emergency. They received the scorn of substantial sectors of society, across gender lines. In response, Meléndez created Milk, an icon of indomitability that recognizes the strength of women and their life-sustaining force while acknowledging their willingness to nurse the beast that sustains patriarchy.

Timothy Lee– A portrait of the comet boy as a bearer of memories, 2019, Silk, heat-transfer ink, gold leaf, and oil on canvas

In his practice, Timothy Lee investigates his struggles with anxiety, which he feels stem from his Asian American, queer, immigrant, and diasporic identities. Yet, while drawing from his personal narratives more broadly, Lee also attends to the disquieting complexities that are intrinsic to growing up as part of two cultures.

The ironic figure of the “comet boy,” visualized here as if emerging from a halo, is both an embrace of and a departure from the artist’s past. The dynamic interplay of light, shadow, and texture evince the layered nature of Lee’s inquiry. A keen attention to materials and precision, as evidenced by the incised cuts throughout much of the work’s surface, allude to the artist’s earlier scientific training. Snapshots of the artist’s childhood in South Korea emblazon the comet boy’s body. Memories, and with them the past, become part of the flesh, like tattoos.

Clarissa Bonet– Glimpse, 2019 from the City Space series, Inkjet print

The discovery of a figure amongst a grid of windows and vertical blinds conjures the disorienting situation of coming upon an unknown face peeking through a window. With that chance encounter comes the recognition that one is being watched, possibly even surveilled. Glimpse is part of a series that explores urban life, specifically the relationship between private and public spaces and the daily experiences of those traversing these areas, including those of the artist.

Though made before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, for Clarissa Bonet, this photograph brings to mind the recent state of being “isolated from the public spaces we all used to enjoy freely.” The unidentified woman may be looking onto an unknown subject left out of the composition, or onto nothing at all.

Ilene Spiewak– Deeper into the Isolation of Self Information and Gender, 2020, Acrylic paint and charcoal on canvas

For over fifty years, Ilene Spiewak has focused on the relations between color and visual space, painting at the edge of representation and abstraction. The introspection and solitude brought by the pandemic made her compositions more sparse and her palette more restrained. “I realized what I had in my studio was myself always. . .. I began to insert myself in my paintings more than I was conscious of in the past.”

In this self-portrait, Spiewak outlines her silhouette in charcoal. Her face and nude torso are rendered in soft shades of white, pink, and gray that push against the yellow background. With frankness, she paints her aging body, countering centuries of idealized, youthful, slender female nudes in art. By placing her figure off-center on the picture plane, with her right arm extended but truncated, Spiewak subtly allows us into the intimate act of observing and painting herself.

Inga Guzyte– Cutting Edge, 2020, from the Kindred Spirits series, wood and used skateboards

Inga Guzyte recycles old skateboards, sawing and reassembling them into new sculptural configurations. Cutting Edge, a portrait of Alison Saar, is from Guzyte’s series “Kindred Spirits.” which honors women who have made their mark in the art world. The ethos of bravery and independence that is part of skateboard culture conveys the tenacity and perseverance of Guzyte’s role models.

Aptly made from reclaimed wood, a recurrent material in Saar’s sculptures and installations, this portrait stands between painting and sculpture. Saar’s expression evokes her fierceness and commitment to her practice. Her headdress points to her Afro-diasporic background, while its dynamic red and orange twists suggest her fiery creative energy. Like a flame, the headwrap attracts a multitude of moths, which recur in Saar’s work to signify a go- between for the real world and the spiritual world.

This exhibition is on view until 10/8/23.

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