Mixografia is pleased to present Self-Portrait, the studio’s latest edition and first collaboration with artist Alex Israel.

In Self-Portrait, Alex Israel takes a visual approach that closely references Southern California popular culture. His use of a nostalgic color palette evokes a 1980s Americana sensibility, and emphasizes the notorious Southern California light often portrayed in film and television. This suite of six prints depicts the artist’s face in profile, replacing his features with an array of bright gradated color fields, distinguishing each element with sharp contours and simplified forms.

Israel creates his self-portraits with a white outline in raised relief. The hollow contour of his profile lies on a plain background of handmade paper, rising nearly one inch from its surface. Each of the six prints differs in its combination of colors, conveying the emblematic tones of California sunsets. The image of Israel’s profile is a distinctive motif seen in much of his work, often rendered at a large scale with airbrushed acrylic on fiberglass. This simplified representation serves as an allusion to the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic silhouette profile drawing as seen in the introduction of his films.

Israel, a Los Angeles native, embraces the character of his hometown as a thematic link through all his work. He remarks, “Los Angeles is one of the main subjects of my work. Every day is an experience of all of this material, which for me, is an art material. Every day, as I move through this city, I’m experimenting with it. It’s a constant process.” Self-Portrait will remain on view through Saturday, December 16th, 2017.

Alex Israel was born in Los Angeles in 1982. He earned a B.A. from Yale University, Connecticut, and his M.F.A. from University of Southern California, Roski School of Fine Arts, Los Angeles. Israel’s works are included in major museums and private collections worldwide, including: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.