JENNIFER FAUN
Faun Manne is a painter and fashion designer based in the Chicago metropolitan area. Having worked in fashion for more than twenty years, Manne acquired an intimate knowledge of the female body. Studying a combination of live models and physical references, she builds poignant collages that denounce the objectification of women. Manne describes her technique as “Painting without paint,” which consists of building figurative compositions by layering magazine cutouts, tissue paper, or brightly colored paper and adding finishing touches with acrylic paint. Devoid of life, her subjects stare into nothingness with vacuous eyes, like mannequins in a shop window. In the Tattoo Me series, for example, the figures are clad with pulp art images from books which highly sexualize and degrade women. Manne used rare original publications, which she scouted from various online sources. The images are representations of the disempowering view held about women, who are regarded as utilitarian objects more akin to dolls than thinking beings. Almost haunting in their candor, the figures send a shiver down our spines. Manne wants us to look deeply into the models’ glassy pupils, so that we can recognize their humanity behind their hollow plastic armors.
JENNIFER FAUN MANNE ON
Hands, 2023
Cut paper collage
24” x 18”
Animale, 2016
Acrylic & mixed media on canvas
20” x 16”
Charlatan (Framed), 2020
Acrylic & collage on paper
Coqueta (Framed), 2020
Acrylic & collage on paper
Duel of Saint and Sinner (framed), 2020
Acrylic & collage on paper
27” x 21”
New Luxury (framed), 2019
Acrylic & collage on paper
I form intricate collages that explore the multiple facets of female identity, in the context of the sacred and secular. While some work is a commentary and experience of memory, social relationships, sexuality, and fantasy, other work centers upon the nature of deity, culture, and mythology. My background as a fashion designer figures largely into the determination of my dominant subject, the female nude. Through my years of working with the female form I gained intimate knowledge of a woman’s physique. My compositions are a compilation of many figures, either from life drawing or physical reference material. However, my subjects and the realms that they inhabit are entirely conjured from my mind‘s eye. I do not aim for an exact likeness, but rather prototypical or archetypal figures whose personality or identity are both partly exposed and partly hidden beneath the surface. It is through my painted figures that I wish to project recognizable aspects of human experience.
ORIGINAL
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JENNIFER FAUN MANNE ARTWORKS ON
