DOLRON, Desiree - Exaltation. Gaze. Xteriors

"The outstanding Dutch artist Desiree DOLRON has produced a new series of images which has been three years in the making. Entitled 'Xteriors', this group of nine seamlessly constructed works have the quality of Old Master paintings, although they are in fact digital photographic composites of several different faces.
DOLRON's aesthetic is intricately linked to the Flemish school of primitive portrait painters such as Petrus Christus, Rogier van der Weyden and the interior Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi.

Desiree DOLRON does not try to emulate their work but rather adapts the aesthetic to her 21st century vision, which is as complex in construction as the paintings themselves. Each piece of work is built using state-of-the-art digital technology, with the final results belying their true complexity.
Like a painter, Dolron moves and mixes the objects and people who act within the tableaux by adding and changing elements within the frame: changing elements of their appearance with those of other people she has found to be more in keeping with her private dream of the final image. As with the Flemish painters she most admires, the work is covered again and again with the final images printed at nearly six feet high. 

DOLRON's previous projects have demonstrated her unique versatility as an artist, produced with an often astonishingly technical application.
Images of religious rituals made whilst travelling in the Far East called 'Exhaltation'; her much admired series of Cuba 'I Give You All My Dreams' continues to create waves within the contemporary art and photography markets; and ‘Gaze’, her series of portraits taken under water, have all cemented her reputation as a powerful artist to be noted in an all too crowded arena." (© michael hoppen gallery)