marcelo monreal artist research page

Ellie Claire Fine Art Blog

A timeline of my work at Cardiff School of Art and Design

Inside Outside – Artist Research – Marcelo Monreal

PERSONAL INTRODUCTION

Marcelo Monreal is a talented collage artist from Santa Catarina, Brazil, who cleverly, metaphorically, cracks skulls without any bloodshed. Monreal digitally manipulates the faces of famous celebrities, actress, actors and models, placing in those cracks and empty holes arrays of botanical compilations to create surreal portraits. Monreal has named his series “FACES (un)BONDED”

COMPOSITIONS OF ARTIST WORKS

The first piece of Montreal’s, labeled 1, which I have chosen displays the American actor Christopher Walken. Personally, it is the intensity of the black and white portrait and stark contrast of the colourful botanicals that draws me towards this particular piece. I personally feel that the black and white portrait captures such a talented and skilled actor better than a colour photo would do. I think that the youthful botanicals, blossoming out of the actors dismembered face, creates a contradistinction, not only between young and old, but also monochrome and bright hues in two living bodies.

The second, labeled 2, depicts the Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o. this is a development of the simple whole face used in the Walken portrait and gives the impression that the foliage and flowers have pushed the face of the head and fractured it in several places thereby creating a more intense image allowing for Monreal to incorporate more botanicals into this piece. I feel that the approach of multiple manipulations is a key part in this particular pieces success. I like that Monreal has an array of plants, escaping from underneath Nyong’o’s face. With this piece, I feel that the underlying story behind it is simple. It is clear that, with such a vast number of flowers erupting from within Nyong’o’s head Monreal sees her as a character full of life. Monreal wanted to recreate that life bursting from within by incorporating as many forms of bright botanicals as he could.

The third, tagged with a small 3 , is of the Latvian male model, Janis Ancens. Like the piece, which captures Walken, Monreal has chosen to only create a single manipulation as opposed to multiple. The portrait of Ancens is different from the others for a few simple and unique reasons. Ancens photograph is quite a harsh one, with little emotion and life to the portrait. The lack of emotion does co-inside with creating a “moody piece” very well. The other difference is that Monreal, in this portrait has only included a small number of flowers and plants. I think this is to symbolise the lack of life in the photograph Monreal chose to manipulate. I feel that while this particular piece of work, while the most simple, is one of the most effective of the 4 that I have selected. I like the melancholy expression on Ancens’ face, but also the simple bouquet of flowers make for a delightfully tasteful and simple piece of work.

The fouth and final, tagged with a small 4, displays the American model Kendall Jenner. Jenner shot to fame through her family, the Kardashians, and has been a successful model for several years. This piece, depicting Jenner in a black and white portrait, draws on both the portrait of Walken and the one of Nyong’o. The black and white portrait is a strong aspect of the piece because it captures Jenner very well and clearly. The colourful explosion of flowers from underneath the cracked parts of Jenner’s face create a contrast which echo’s that which is similar to what we saw in Walken’s piece. I feel that the monochrome portrait versus the vibrant floral arrangements creates the best outcome. This particular piece of Monreals is quite a striking item of work because it cleverly creates a stunning contrast between the two, still sticking to the “larger than life” character theme underneath a portrait that appears to lack real emotion and life.

INFLUENCES BEHIND ARTISTS WORK

To Monreal, there was no specific inspiration. He stated in an interview; that he feels people don’t tell us who they really are. “That they keep all of their real selves hidden from view.” That is why Monreal started the project, opening them up within his unique collages and thus revealing the rare moments in which we see the beauty that’s behind their appearances.

WHY IS THIS ARTISTS WORK SO SPECIAL?

For me, this particular artist has challenged the norm. Monreal has put his foot down and literally delved into the lives of models that he has chosen because he feels that they were hiding something from the world, which Monreal was adamant should be seen. I like his forward way of thinking, which challenges and suppresses what is deemed “right” in our messed up and twisted society.

WHAT HAVE I GAINED FROM MY RESEARCH ON THIS ARTIST?

In my research of Monreal’s work, I have found a great amount of inspiration. I feel that the unique, norm challenging motive behind his work casts shadows, which is similar to my own. I think outside the box and challenge myself to create works, which I intend to be lasting. Monreal already does and has manufactured a body of work that already shows promise of breaking the social mould.

Marcelo Monreal is an immensely talented artist whose style uniquely challenging the world’s expectation with respect to beauty and physical appearance. Monreal has honed his skills to create a selection of really unique pieces that show, through Monreal’s eyes, what he sees beneath peoples’ skin and their outer shells.

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• Art + Culture

Getting surreal with Marcelo Monreal’s pop culture collages

The Santa Catarina based artist explores the hidden parts of our identity by deconstructing famous faces in unexpected ways.

Elegantly slicing up visuals of Kate Moss, Lindsay Lohan and Naomi Campbell, Marcelo fuses pop culture with the natural world, creating jarring yet beautiful portraits embellished with vibrant flowers in bloom. For him, the process is about finding the true self, the concealed beauty that people hide from the outside world.

Follow him on Instagram now for artful inspiration, and sample some of his Faces [UN]bonded series below.

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Marcelo Monreal

Updated: Dec 11, 2020

Conducting research is one of the most enjoyable parts of the design and project process for me, albeit a time-consuming part. Through our group's constant dialogue throughout this module, one member, Tegan, shared with the group an artist that she thought my portrait experimentation work resembled and reminder her of. I was, naturally, curious about taking a look at the artist's work.

Marcelo Monreal is a Brazilian collage artist who takes the portraits of people and distorts them using a style where the head is split into various elements, and the voids where that are left are filled with a wide array of beautiful flora. The result is a stunning example of graphic artistry and digital skill.

This artist for me and his fondness of using aspects of nature in his work struck a chord with me. At first glance, I assumed that the floral aesthetic was in response to the now culturally trendy theme of climate change and the protection of nature. It was heartwarming to learn that this style has roots based in his family and of being in the garden with his mother where she told him that people are made out of flowers. In an attempt to keep her memory alive, maybe even blooming, he uses flora in his works to honour her. ("Interview With Marcelo Monreal", n.d.).

When taking stock of his works, you can see that the works have developed over time, where his recent works are much more elaborate in comparison. This detail and eclectic work seem to hold the viewer's attention, where the viewer is focused on absorbing every detail of the piece, knowing they will not be able to truly take it all in. Naturally, I always think about how work can be improved upon and how the work could be taken into another field of design. Monreal's work made me think about how his pieces would work within the motion graphic space. Could these flowers animate and bloom out of the face and body? Could the flora change through seasons? How would Monreal work with flora in winter when the types of flora are very different in comparison to those of spring and summer?

In an interview, Monreal said that it usually takes two days to complete a piece and that, over the years he has learnt the shape of the face and in particular where to make the cuts and how many to do. Years, however, is not the allotted time I have at my disposal to be able to make my graphic responses in a similar style. Through my recent experimentation with the cutting and replacing style, I am learning the basics of where cuts could be made, however, my next steps after investigating Monreal's work is to study how he cuts the faces. How do they differ depending on the angle of the photograph? How many cuts are present? How does he determine the use of background objects?

I am excited to not only be exposed to Monreal's work but to also see how his pieces, and studying them, will impact my final responses.

References and Figure List:

Monreal, M. (n.d.). Portrait . [Image]. https://www.myboyb.com/featured-artist-friday-marcelo-monreal-cuts-into-inner-beauty/

Monreal, M. (n.d.). Portrait . [Image]. https://www.facebook.com/marcelomonrealartist/

Monreal, M. (n.d.). Portrait . [Image]. https://samcdesignblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/the-digital-glamour-of-marcelo-monreal/

Monreal, M. (n.d.). Portrait . [Image]. https://www.instagram.com/p/BNaM2ozjfcC/?taken-by=marcelomonreal&hl=en

Monreal, M. (n.d.). Portrait . [Image]. http://www.contemporaryartcuratormagazine.com/home-2/marcelo-monreal2

Interview With Marcelo Monreal . (n.d.). Photographize. https://www.photographize.co/interviews/marcelomonreal/.

Marcelo Monreal . (n.d.). Ideas & Processes.

https://nickyb513882.wordpress.com/marcelo-monreal/.

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For certain aspects of the project, I needed to use a variety of research methods to collect information and data that would help inform the project outcomes. One area of research that informed a key

• ARCHITECTURE

Faces [UN]bonded by Marcelo Monreal

| --> Fashion | September 10, 2015 | -->

Marcelo Monreal’s Surreal Collages Replace Our Insides With Beautiful Blooms

Marcelo Monreal is a Brazilian collage artist who cracks skulls in the most beautiful way possible. Digitally splitting parts of models and celebrities faces ( Christopher Walken and Kate Moss are among them), he fuses beautiful blooms with the broken shapes.

Small, colorful flowers grow from behind eye sockets , in the place of noses , and out of mouths . This surreal series is called Faces [UN]bonded . In Monreal’s opinon , people don’t often tell us who they really are.

Instead, they keep parts of their real selves hidden. He opens them up with his collages and reveals the rare moments in which we see the beauty that’s behind their appearance.

more. www.facebook.com/marcelomonrealartist

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Marcelo Monreal

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• June 29, 2015

Marcelo Monreal Cuts Open Pop Culture Icons to Reveal Inner Beauty

Based in Santa Catarina, Brazil, collage artist Marcelo Monreal’s  work is going viral for his different take on inner beauty. His latest works cut open the portraits of celebrities in Photoshop, super models and other faces of pop culture that are otherwise stagnant, to reveal beautiful blooms underneath. Monreal’s use of floral motifs stems (no pun intended) from his first job as an artist, developing embroidery for a label factory. His imagery is in a similar vein to that of the spliced vintage photographs of Matthieu Bourel, covered here , and Rocío Montoya’s manipulated, experimental photos. While his subjects are uniquely contemporary, Monreal shares the same sense of bizarre humor that combines the morbid with abstracted glamour. As our society’s social pathos and obsession with celebrities grows, so do the blooms behind their faces in this ongoing series. Monreal says, “If the let loose from the rest of the body, which would be within? Well, to me, still I think that people have a little bit of beauty within them by more that this is saved and only revealed in rare moments. The result of this reflection gave rise to this series called: Faces [UN]bonded.”

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Marcelo Monreal

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Shawn Mendes's relevatory new album art shows in a single glance that the pop star is growing up

The covers of his previous records maintain a distance, but this artwork completely opens him up.

Social Sharing

A few years ago, a boy named Shawn Peter Raul Mendes amassed a fanbase by posting musical covers to Vine and YouTube from his bedroom in Pickering, Ontario. Today, his strategy is a little different.

A month after "In My Blood," the confessional lead single from the 19-year-old pop prince's third album — released today — Mendes offered the first visual cue of what the new work would not only sound but look like. A cryptic live stream appeared on Mendes's YouTube channel that, in obvious tribute to Frank Ocean's Endless , displayed artisans labouring silently in a workshop over the course of nine hours. The stream culminated in a sudden reveal: a huge, sumptuous canvas featuring a painting of the singer's face obstructed by an outgrowth of flowers. In real time, fans witnessed the creation and unveiling of a massive replica of the album art for what would be christened Shawn Mendes .

While the covers of his previous two records, Handwritten and Illuminate , maintain a distance by using homespun photos of the burgeoning pop star, the image for this self-titled work completely opens the singer up. Mendes, dashing as he is, has surely been photographed from every possible angle — but this radiant depiction, with his million-dollar face severed for a floral arrangement to burst through the cracks in his porcelain skin, seemed to promise a side of the teenager the world hadn't wholly laid eyes on before: his inside. That is, until the internet noticed that the iconography sort of rang a bell.

Brazilian artist Marcelo Monreal's has built an oeuvre from his digital portrait series Faces [UN]Bonded , which consists of photos of actors and models whose faces have been dislodged to reveal the natural beauty that lurks behind outward appearance. Fans instantly drew the link between Monreal's project to Mendes's new album artwork, and the singer was thrust into his closest brush with anything resembling scandal when some tweets accused the singer and his team of stealing from the collage artist. But, as the adage goes, good artists borrow while great artists and app developers steal. Mendes had taken direct inspiration from a fan edit, conceived using a filter on the photo editing app Photo Lab, which had itself co-opted Monreal's [UN]Bonded design. The singer's team had seen this, and sought out Monreal to bring the current album art to fruition. It was all a big misunderstanding.

Last night, in response to a Twitter question about the reason for self-titling his newest output, Mendes responded : "I wanted to stamp this moment in time at 19 because ive [sic] never felt so true to myself." Self-titled albums are typically meant to serve one of two purposes. For innumerable musicians it's their debut, their grand announcement of themselves to the world: Bowie, Madonna, Fleetwood Mac. When a self-titled record surfaces later in a career, however, it typically signals reinvention — think the surprise visual album that ushered in a whole new golden era of Beyoncé, or The Beatles' transcendental, revolutionary White Album .

Now, our dear Shawn Mendes is only a few years into what will surely be a long-lasting career, so why should he have to announce himself again? He's undoubtedly flourished into a household name. His singles have been peaking high on the charts for the past three years and he was even named one of Time Magazine 's Most Influential People of 2018. We know him, we get his thing. So then, apart from all of that, who exactly is the Shawn Mendes who's revealing himself to us on this latest effort?

<a href="https://t.co/GJIIBKtfrS">pic.twitter.com/GJIIBKtfrS</a> &mdash; @ShawnMendes

Shawn Mendes  is both flirtatious and devastating. Its opener, "In My Blood," details his relatively newfound battles with anxiety, and at points throughout the album he hints — in varying modes of falsetto — about using alcohol to cope, waking everyday to horrific news headlines, one night stands where the lover has run off come morning, unrelenting heartbreak. Who hurt this sweet boy?

Doing rounds of press for the release, Mendes confessed that he hasn't actually ever fallen in love or had his heart broken, joking that it makes him a "phony" given it's the subject of his entire discography to date. That's where his team of collaborators come in — he's been fostering sturdy relationships with a number of songwriting mentors, including John Mayer, Teddy Geiger, Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic and Ed Sheeran, all of whose more seasoned run-ins with romance likely informed the record they collectively gave birth to. Mendes also teamed up with peers Julia Michaels and Khalid for two of the album's duets, penning a particular resonant track with the latter in response to last year's Manchester Arena bombing after an Ariana Grande concert.

In the 1962 National Film Board documentary Lonely Boy , 19-year-old heartthrob Paul Anka admits that he's aware his career is largely the result of his fanbase's desire for him. "I think that they kind of feel if I'm singing like a lonely boy," he says, "they like to feel that they're the girl that I'm singing about." Mendes exhibits a similar self-awareness about his status in the industry today. Defining himself too distinctly in any one direction might be detrimental to his career.

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Shawn Mendes  the album only begins to reveal things hitherto unknown about Shawn Mendes the artist — but it ultimately reinforces that he's a tremendous talent, surrounded by a solid support system, who's headed in the right direction. He's a kid with his feet on the ground and so much room to grow — and that growth is happening before our eyes.

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