* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Originally from Denmark, Reiner Hansen currently lives and works in San Francisco Bay Area, CA. She received a BA in Graphic Design & Illustration from Kolding School of Design in Denmark. Her work has been shown in numerous galleries across America and in Europe, most recently at Cain Schulte Contemporary Art in San Francisco, Kunstverein Buchholz in Hamburg, Germany and Jack Chiles Gallery in New York.
Reiner describes the work by saying, “In this series of self portrait paintings I hide within invented personas, each mapped onto my own features. There is a process of transformation into involuntarily ‘stereotyped’ notions of who these females are, like method acting in painted form, leaving a history of performance in each image. Simultaneously a game that is both playful and a meditative speculation on a fabricated ‘other life’, these images are partly about investigating the idea of ‘escape,’ not just away from ‘the self’ and into anonymity, but also away from the art historical traditions’ established practice of depicting the artist. I see these females as having contrasting properties: seductive, repulsive, flamboyant, needy and powerful, yet victims of their own exhibitionism. Desperately grabbing for attention, they are perhaps paralleling my own experience as an artist, aggressively desiring exposure in the art world.”
