Alice Herbst is a young woman with a story. A problematic adolescence fighting against BDD, an early staged career as a model, that she quit after too many bad experiences, and finally a new direction towards art and creativity. It’s a story about self discovery and self determination, about courage and freedom.
Alice Herbst tells her story with her paintings. Her work is a journey into the ongoing process of building a personality. She paints intimate scenes, maybe memories, where the figures emerge from or disappear into the background, like fading photographs. Through her striking brushes, the characters become part of their surroundings and the other way around. By merging the figure and the background, the artist tells us how our personality is made by our everyday choices and our style. Our home decor, our outfits, our haircut, all those little things are a form of expression, they reflects who we are, but also who we want to be.
In her works, Alice Herbst juxtaposes detailed depictions and rough brushes in a mix of abstraction and figurative painting, which gives rhythm to the compositions. It seems to me an invite to the viewer to fill in the blanks with their experiences and imagination. It looks like a narrative expedient to extend the storytelling and turn every scene into a shared memory.
Her paintings are movie stills that make you wonder: who are these girls? What happened? What now?
Metropolis Contemporary Art Gallery 