Robert Otto Epstein: Russell Westbrook Discount

6 color screenprint on Mohawk 100lb cover, 24 x18 , 2017

Robert Otto Epstein s (b. 1979) portrait series represents his interest in language and symbols—how a signifier both represents and takes precedence over the meaning of its subject. His portraits are based on Google search images of Hollywood celebrities, fashion models, and sports players. Epstein works within a visual vocabulary of analog patterns and super-flat spaces. Facial features like eyes, noses, and mouths, are playfully reduced to simple forms. Sometimes they smile or stare back, but they always engage the viewer with stoic posturing. Like a writer who accesses memory in order to ‘read’ or make sense of the present, Epstein pulls from a nostalgic past as he renders his figures and invents their wardrobes. The paintings act as both a short and a final cut; they are “linguistic biographies” of his intriguing subjects.