The Contemporary Art Modern Project is pleased to announce an exclusive online solo exhibition featuring a selection of works from California-based artist Natalie Obermaier. The exhibition explores her collage style, which is dependent on a physical distortion of images through weaving techniques and provides insight into our perception of beauty and how that can be skewed when we are relentlessly consuming images that aren’t candid to how we view ourselves.
It’s difficult to feel a sense of inclusion when all around us advertisements have an affinity for what we should change about ourselves. Obermaier expresses her dismay and puts it into her college work which seeks to find what can be revealed when those same advertisements are severed, interlaced and connected to fabricate a new meaning. In her piece, Bubble Gum, the subjects involved in her work are pieced together and reconfigured in an intricate way, highlighting the true beauty within imperfection.
Obermaier describes her practice as “a way to remix stereotypical tropes, calling attention to visual homogeny and confirmation bias.” At other times, she deliberately contrasts images to create “unpredictable blends.” In Warrior in the Rain, the repeated weaving motif creates an optical illusion of tessellated textures that shift depending on the viewer's perspective. Her hand woven technique is a different spin on analog collages because the artist doesn't just reassemble cutouts on top of each other, but she also attaches them after she spends hours cutting patterns onto the pages.
The art of weaving can be used for storytelling and here Obermaier takes control of the narrative perpetuated by fashion magazines promoting Eurocentric beauty standards, retaliates her discomfort and turns it into a coping mechanism that is affirming to not only her self-identity but to others as well. The faces and figures featured in her work are fragmented because representation is often marketed to others as an approach to sell to viewers what beauty is and how it should be rendered. Overall, her use of linear patterns obscures the picture-perfect models and symbolizes the disarray within us all.
