Leslie Nemour

“Wedding Fashions” is a series that parallels personal divergent obsessions with fashion, relationships and mortality. (In other words, shopping, romance and aging), These paintings form a subset of a larger body of work all linking to a fascination with popular culture and its commodification of intimacies within personal relationships. They are more about the struggle between permanence and transition (comfort and change) than about the literal significance of matrimony.

Articles of clothing, particularly dresses, have occupied a small history in my paintings. They represent the mystery of the self while physical image is disguised and modified through fashion. The paintings of wedding dresses are in a sense “anti-fashion” as they allude to classical standards of beauty and ongoing romantic notions of the bride. The suggestion of goddesses and otherworldliness is through formed costume void of human figures. Like previous work referencing the contemporary phenomena of mail order brides, “Wedding Fashions” challenges traditional aspirations with contemporary ideals.

This detour to a simplification of a singular image serves as a temporary departure from complex narrative paintings. As opposed to stressing a dialogue between images, the monumental dresses create a conversation confronting viewer with image. The local color is reinvented with a limited monochromatic palette. In turn, the amplified scale of the dresses creates a topographical physical illusion transcending the magnified significance of the wedding dress icon.