Set against mountains, desert plains, and the cobalt blue skies one finds at high elevations, Chloe West’s striking oil paintings merge Dutch Golden Age iconographies with both mythic and everyday motifs of the American West.
West was born and raised in Wyoming, the peaks and pastures of which continue to influence her hyperrealistic figurative works. In her current solo exhibition, Games of Chance at HARPER’S, the artist draws on European portraiture and still life traditions in a series of self-portraits and tableaux challenging stereotypes of the West as a frontier molded by machismo.
“Cowboy Philosopher,” for example, portrays the artist in direct confrontation with the viewer, seated beside a mountain lion skull at a table covered with a celestial tapestry. The painting evokes Salomon Koninck’s “A Philosopher” (1635) and works by other Flemish artists of the 17th and 18th centuries, who often depicted alchemists and scholars in their studies accompanied by skulls, devices, and documents.
West subverts our understanding of cowboy culture as predominantly masculine, juxtaposing her own body with bones, small weapons, and fabric backdrops that establish a tension between life and death, folklore and daily life, and the sacred and the profane. Animal bones, thorns, and knives nod to memento mori, a reminder of the impermanence of life, while also invoking the supernatural and a sense of cyclical time. Casting deep, dark shadows, the glaring sun reveals all.
Portraying herself in western wear, West bonds to the continuum of the landscape and its customs and narratives while considering the way European attitudes and actions like Manifest Destiny shaped our understanding of the region. The artist taps into legend, history, and magical realism to blur distinctions between the past and contemporary experience. “Ultimately, throughout Games of Chance, West confronts the idealization of frontier heroism, dismantling its pre-established boundaries and expanding upon the legacy it left behind,” the gallery says.
Games of Chance opens today and continues through May 10 in New York City. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
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