Paris-based painter Geneviève Parizot generally goes simply by her last name. If her moniker suggests theatricality – indeed, she has designed sets for several plays – so do her artworks. The unique style Parizot has developed consists of oil paintings depicting life-sized, simply-dressed human figures set against monotone backdrops. Bodies and clothes are stripped of details to emphasize characters' postures, facial expressions and intersecting gazes. Her visual style, in addition to its theatrical elements, evokes a kind of dreamscape. Subordinate areas of her canvases include blurred lines, incomplete features and mixing colors, leading our eyes to the most essential concentrations of details in characters' faces.
Looking like actors from a stage production, these figures combine seemingly premeditated poses with complex emotional charges. Parizot testifies to the richness of emotional life by depicting the full-body performances it requires. These are not, however, alienating investigations of minute human rituals. Parizot's full-sized canvases invite viewers to take part in the play of body language and facial expressions she records.
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