MARCELO MONREAL - Artist Research

Marcelo Monreal is a Brazilian collage  artist,  known for his different take on inner beauty. In his pieces of work, he digitally cut open portraits of celebrities, supermodels and other faces, showing beautiful flowers blooming underneath. When creating a piece of his artwork, he has to make sure that in the portrait there is a correct place and correct angle he is able to cut out sections. This is because every face is unique, meaning the cut outs on certain portraits can either turn out good or bad. One of the key meanings behind his pieces of work, and the reason why he includes flowers in his work is because he feels like the cut outs make the people become ‘vulnerable’ to opening up, and the flowers show the beauty that they are shielding with their appearance.

When looking at Marcelo Monreal’s artwork, I really notice the vibrant colours of the flowers, which may represent the true colours and personality of the person in the portrait. In a few of Monreal’s pieces of work, the portrait is in black and white, however he has left the flowers with the vibrant colours. I find that this looks really effective, as it shows that even though the person in the portrait may seem dual and closed off on the outside, on the inside they are blooming, bright and full of life. This leaves me the impression that you should not ‘read a book by its cover’.

He focused this piece of his work on a portrait on Kendall Jenner, an American model who is also known as one of the Kardashians. This piece depicts Jenner in a black and white portrait, the explosion of vibrant flowers coming from the fragmented sections adds amazing contrast.
  The vibrant colours from the flowers give life to the portrait, and also indicates that she is a beautiful person on the inside as well as the outside. All the of the fully bloomed flowers give me the impression that Kendall Jenner is full of life and her life is blooming (like the flowers).

Monreal has inspired me to work on cutting out portraits and involve flowers into my work, however I will be working with a different materials and techniques and my work will have a completely different meaning behind it. I will be focusing on the flowers as well as the person, instead of the flowers representing them in a way of expressing them and their personality. The flowers will represent growth and decay, linking to the person in the portrait and what stage of life they are at, and also slightly representing their brightness and true colours.