Idolatry

De la Motte’s current series is a continuation of painting practices and ideas occasioned in his recent work. Using baroque painting techniques, figurations and idols then updating them with modern synthetic materials and graphic application. However this series, rather than bringing compositions and idols from the past and updating them into the contemporary painting landscape, neo classical painting is beployed on contemporary subjects framed with titles that echo the past, basically flipping the script.

The fluorescent motif as well as being indicative of the modernist rupture of classical painting, becomes the contemporary subject itself. Taking a somewhat more conceptual approach, these paintings are interested in the idolatry of identity. The huge emphasis and importance of identity in the contemporary world is in a bind with the inability to readily define oneself, questioning what the contemporary subject looks like, and is.