Paradiso

By Andrew Frost

Rebecca Karageorgos has a dark mind even when the lights are on full blast. In two series of photographs produced in 2009 and 2011, the artist created stunning portrait-like studies of friends and family, up close images of her often-naked subjects, their vulnerabilities exposed in settings designed to evoke pre-Modern painting, and perhaps intentionally, creating a Lynchian vibe of haunted theatre.

For Paradiso Karageorgos has ditched the darkness of Sturm und Drang for a colourful, Bollywoodesque over-the-topness that evokes the Baroque, albeit summoned up with Photoshop and special effects.  In Adele (honeys get the money) there’s an echo of a Parmigianino Madonna, via Cronulla, the subject’s creed tattooed to her chest, while in Liam (2MA BOI) we find a Patrina Hicks-style boy infected with a Piccinini virus. The key work for the show is Genevieve [summa luv], an Everlast-suited figure adrift on a raft of flowers. This is the Barque’s spirit of earthly, corporeal pleasure meeting heavenly rapture by way of the smoothed-over pixels and massaged colours of contemporary advertising.  Paradise indeed.

Until June 6

Firstdraft Gallery, Surry Hills

Pic: Rebecca Karageorgos, Genevieve [summa luv], 2013. Digital print on gloss, 60x100cms.