The Oracle opens August 31, 2022 at TAG Gallery, 5458 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036. TAG is open 1pm-7pm, Wed-Sun.
The Oracle is a collection of works done during the past year of the COVID19 pandemic. It consists of large acrylic paintings and digital artwork.
The collection intends to create a space of self reflection. The works depict portraits of people from different dimensions of time and space; past and present, real and fictional, tangible world and virtual world, the physical and the metaverse.
The oracle asks two simple questions: Who are you? What’s your story?
The acrylic paintings are of heroes and saints, painted in acrylic and metallic powder on canvas. Each one is a timeless cultural hero, living in a golden eternal world of fame, expressing their powers, as well as their weaknesses. Continuing with the mirror-selfie theme from past series of works, some of the figures are taking a selfie- anybody can be a hero, and be both the model and the artist.
The digital works further develop the acrylic paintings, assisted by artificial intelligent mechanism to create unique visual variations of the themes. Another dimension of the paintings can be experienced looking at them through a smartphone with an augmented reality application.
About the artist: Eran Barnea is a Los Angeles based artist, born in Israel and trained in fine art, architecture, code breaking, and digital visual effects for movies. His work is a journey into the visual language of art and symbols, focusing on the human condition in our time, and raising awareness to social and psychological issues by looking at reality from different perspectives. In his recent paintings Barnea portrays people as they like to see themselves in the mirror. Selfies are posted on social media to get likes, they are a visual manifestation of this age of individualism and self determination: Everyone takes a selfie, everyone’s the artist.
“As an artist I apply no judgment on the subject, I don’t pose the models but merely copy their aesthetic judgement, or the lack of it”. - Eran Barnea