Kehinde Wiley

Wiley has made a name for himself by painting young black men in the style of solemn, regal portraiture that was once the realm of dead white guys. He invites young men he meets around his hometown of New York to pose in the style of an Old Master portrait, then adds a colorful backdrop and a little flair. Recently, Wiley has taken his operation international, painting people from Brazil, India, Israel, and elsewhere in styles inspired by traditional forms from their respective locales.

Laurence Aëgerter

A conceptualist who utilizes a variety of mediums, Laurence Aëgerter cleverly employed photography to appropriate and revitalize iconic paintings on view at the Hermitage Amsterdam during the 2010 exhibition Matisse to Malevich: Pioneers of Modern Art from the Hermitage. The French-born, Amsterdam-based artist positioned people and objects in front of modernist masterpieces and then snapped pictures of the resulting tableaux. Coming full circle, her colorful images are now being shown in the exhibition The Modernists and More, which is on view at the Hermitage Amsterdam through February 20th. Whitehot contributor Paul Laster recently connected with the artist to discuss the ideas and process behind this engaging series of images.

Paul Laster: What was the idea for the making of your photographic series Hermitage, The Modernists, which is currently on view at the Hermitage Amsterdam?

Laurence Aëgerter: I wanted to investigate our individual relation to art and our perception of iconic artworks. The more the icon is alive in our mind—by means of reproductions and stories around it—the higher is the intensity of the expectation to be confronted with its reality. But what can we really experience of it? When our vision of a work of art is altered, it becomes a reversed mirror—anchored in our present time. By layering the images, I seek the in-between spaces and bits of time that occur in the process of looking.

Laster: Were the photographs staged or taken by chance?

Aëgerter: They were all staged. For privacy and security reasons, I wasn't allowed to photograph during opening hours. I had to get permission. I know the marketing director, who already knew about my work, and he gave me a carte blanche.

Heather Theurer

Heather’s paintings are the product of decades of observation of people, environments, animals and textiles. Although she was not able to obtain a formal education in art, all her studies of the natural world in addition to the works of great artists including the renaissance masters, the pre-raphaelites of the late 19th century and modern masters have influenced he work in a way she couldn’t imagine getting in a classroom.

Themes in her work include religious symbolism, fantasy realism, equine and wildlife, and bold reworking of Disney characters. Her process in painting is constantly morphing as she applies new techniques, but most often consist of a multitude layers of paint and glazes (as many as 20 or so in some cases) to reach the desired depth and detail that dominates her work.

Shared and collected around the world, Heather Theurer’s paintings are constructed in the midst of a bustling family with five children in Las Vegas, Nevada. Regardless of the challenges, her art has gone on to get the attention of USA Today and the LA Times, garnered contracts with Disney Fine Art and Fantasy Con, and received recognition and awards from respected organizations such as Art Renewal Center, Artist’s Magazine and Spectrum, among others.