Chambliss Giobbi’s Collages Are Cubist Portraits Made With 100′s Of Photos

moray mair | Art and design | October 24, 2012

Chambliss Giobbi‘s collages take the technique to a new level, each composition made with hundreds of photographs which he deconstructs by tearing into small pieces. These fragments are then reassembled into a collage that is fractured, cubist, a broken mirror that distorts our view. The process takes a long time and after putting the images together he spreads a layer of beeswax over the work.

Ciobbi calls his technique ‘temporal cubism’ in other words his work expresses time, it’s passing, it’s momentary nature. He attempts to capture this sense of time moving forward by taking sequential photos of models, props, backgrounds and so on and using cubist techniques to compress the period into a single moment. Thus ‘Temporal Cubism’. As he says:

If Picasso and Braque can break down a three-dimensional form to a two-dimensional canvas, why not compress time and it’s passing in the same way?

Here’s a statement from his website:

Chambliss Giobbi’s figurative collages work on two levels: Firstly, as objects of obsessive psychological and physical mutation, and secondly, as testaments to an intense personal courtship between artist and model. After a marathon photo session with his subject, Giobbi prints thousands of photographs. He then tears the prints and glues them, piece by piece, layer upon layer, to create the image. What follows is a series of collages on panels. Some pieces are flat, while others utilize sculpted forms to create three-dimensional surfaces: Each series embodies a reinvention of technique that conforms to how Giobbi sees the individual portrayed.

Giobbi’s work is deeply psychological: portraits at once linear and composed, then abrupt and splintered. One is left with the notion of witnessing a concentrated, virtually operatic compression of time, catharsis and myth: an intimate viewing of entropy.

In his new series ‘Se7n, The Seven Deadly Sins’, he has taken 1000′s of photographs and shredded, torn, cut, assembled, composed and affixed them onto large aluminium panels to create compositions that are as much a psychological drama, as a morality tale.

They’ll be on show from 4th December 2012 – 31st January 2013 at the 101/Exhibit, 101 NE 40 Street Miami, Forida

Via Hi Fructose