i was trying to make this perfect, then this happened: That Looks NOTHING Like Me!

Artist Enters Trancelike State To Create Brutally Honest Portraits
By: Priscilla Frank
Source: Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/guillaume-bruere_n_5800882.html?utm_hp_ref=arts

The general concept of portraiture is simple; the more realistic it is of the person, the better of a portrait it seems to be. However, this method of portraiture "mimics a photograph of the person, but not the person (Frank, 1). And this concept is pleasantly and paradoxically questioned in the art of Guillaume Bruere (as seen in his exhibition at Nahmad Contemporary), who perceives a rather unique, quant understanding of what he believes to be "honest portraiture" (Frank, 1). Bruere does what portraits quite often fail to do; he does not show the person through his work, but rather the character within them. The current generalized concept of "abstract art" has become a system of sorts, where spontaneity and momentous wonder have failed to gain a position. As such systematic approaches to the otherwise seemingly strange abstract aspect of art have managed to drown within them all unforced unpredictability, it is the rather traditional portraiture aspect of art that has become anomalous. Within his pieces, Bruere uses oil pastel, watercolor, acrylic, and graphite. What he manages to do with his application of the colors leaves an infinite end to the imagination of the observer. His works of a coworker, seen below, rather unexpectedly depict the single being, unimaginable with the actual observation of the distinctions amongst his pieces. This differentiation, he says, however, "speaks to the complexity of human beings" (Frank, 1). And it is often, when hesitation leads to an infinite pause within the artist, a moment of emptiness, blankness, leading the mind to abolish its pure and unbiased first perception of a human being, adding onto it prejudice and tendency. In order to abstain from this natural restrictiveness of human nature, Bruere attempts "to work faster than the pace of his own consciousness, creating art rapidly, in a trance-like state" (Frank, 1). He rids his subjects of all they are perceived to be, therefore creating a depiction of what he sees as "human-to-human encounter as it exists in the moment" (Frank, 1).
Amongst everything in existence that could have possibly been restricted, art has ironically become a member of that list. It is upsetting, hopeless that the thought process of human nature leads them to a system for doing any task. Bruere's work speaks through this concept, presenting the slightest inkling of hope towards unpredictability and a lack of inner inhibition. Art is moving away, quite possibly, from a sense of realism, as photography has taken that role. Art is leaning towards abstraction, amongst which there has wrongly been placed upon a process. Bruere addresses both aspects, creating, in a world of expectancy, an unrealistic field of portraiture, within which realism was never supposed to be intended; and which he has managed to understand.