Alex Israel

Peres Projects, Berlin

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2013

Berlin, Peres Projects, Alex Israel: Self-Portraits, April - June 2013

Dijon, Le Consortium, Alex Israel, July - September 2013

Allese Thomson, 'Bohemian Rhapsody', Artforum, 2 May 2013, online

D. Creahan, 'Berlin - Alex Israel: "Self-Portraits" at Peres Projects Through June 15th, 2013', Artobserved, 12 June 2013, online

Anon., ‘Alex Israel at Le Consortium’, Mousse Magazine, July 2013, online

Robert Johnston, 'Alex Israel is the Artist Inspiring Stella McCartney’s Menswear', GQ UK, December 2016, p. 246, illustrated  

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter, with more red tonalities in the original. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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Born in Los Angeles in 1982, Alex Israel’s practice is utterly entrenched within the silver screen myths, celebrity hinterland, and dream factory that is Hollywood. Forming part of his series of emblematic self-portraits, the present work depicts a pared back likeness of Israel in profile wearing his archetypal Freeway 10 sunglasses and contained within a fibreglass panel moulded into the shape of the artist’s silhouette. Self-Portrait is one of the first series of 20 Self-Portraits that the artist showed at Peres Projects in Berlin, each of which borrows its colours from the palette of a major painter. Articulated in striking fields of gradated colour, the present work has borrowed from Milton Avery's bold palette – the candy-coloured soft-focus backgrounds familiar to his well known corpus of imposing backdrops or Flats – deep brown fades to rusty red to delineate the hair, pale yellow transformed into peach hues articulate the skin, while bright orange sunglass frames are contrasted against striking blue lenses. The effect is unmistakably Pop in aesthetic: Israel has transformed his likeness into a memorable commercial icon that bespeaks the glamorous and sunny idealism of an L.A. lifestyle. Exhibited in sequence alongside a number of other colour variants at Peres Projects in 2013, Self-Portrait – and moreover the artist's own persona – lies at the very centre of Israel’s dreamscape interpretation of L.A.’s glossy and seductive superficiality.

This series of self-portraits found their origin in the logo created for the title sequence of Israel’s series of online celebrity portraits, As It LAys. Taking the form of interviews conducted within an old-fashioned TV talk show format, Israel, dressed smartly in a suit and tie and wearing his signature sunglasses, asks his celebrity guests a series of banal and unrelated questions in an expressionless manner. Reading from cue cards whilst sitting next to his famous interviewee, these question and answer sessions take place against the pink-blue sunset backdrop of his signature Flats – paintings manufactured for Israel by the sole remaining scenic artist still employed by Warner Bros. studios. The results are deadpan interactions that are revealing in their variance; whether the participants knowingly comply with Israel’s affected impassionate exchange or find themselves apparently irked by the one-sided and blank monotony of the conversation, As it LAys presents an intriguing dialogue on the cult of celebrity.

The present work builds on Israel’s brand of L.A.-styled Americana as presented in the title sequence of As It LAys. Following a self-consciously kitsch title sequence of sunshine drenched shots of L.A., palm trees, surfers, and panning cityscapes put to a cheesy saxophone backing track, Israel straightens his tie, shuffles his cue cards, and turns to the side – this shot in profile then transforms into a gradated candy-coloured logo, a formal schema closely approximated by the present painting. Indeed, aside from the celebrity guests that Israel proclaims are his heroes, the real star of these online videos is the artist himself. Taking inspiration from the famous opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, where the legendary director steps into his famous cartoonesque silhouette, Israel is heavily driven by the cultivation of his own public persona. As he has explained of his self-portrait/logo: “It is a way of reducing my facial features to a graphic that can represent and symbolize the various things I do, within and outside of the art world” (Alex Israel cited in: Anon., ‘Alex Israel: Stars in his Eyes’, W Magazine, 12 January 2016, online). Of these various projects, Israel owns his own eyewear company: Freeway Eyewear is sold online through his own high fashion concept website and in select retail outlets, and is shamelessly self-promoted by the artist who is never seen without them. Picking up the legacy of Andy Warhol and latterly Jeff Koons, Israel carefully walks an ambiguous line between cynical denigrator and earnest celebrity fanboy.