CHUCK CLOSE

was born 1940 in Monroe, Washington.

Today he lives and works in the centre of New York City.

Chuck Close's photorealistic style was a reaction to Pop Art and extends far beyond the shiny surfaces of usual Photo-Realism. With the help of modern photographic techniques - highly enlarged projections and the application of various focal points for the individual elements in the photograph - the pictures achieve a depiction of reality which hardly have anything more to do with that which the eye can register. In an almost brutal manner the finest details of the faces are visible on his canvases - every wrinkle, every pore, every scar and every hair. Nothing is spared, everything is analyzed with fascination. At a time when scientific exploration of the brain at a microcosmic level is proceeding triumphantly, this artistic emphasis on the smallest detail is of particular interest. But the concept that Athene sprang fully-formed from the head of Zeus also gains extra dimensions when one submits to the resonance of Chuck Close's portraits.