Portraits from MySpace and Facebook

Artists Paul Campbell and Dominic Paul Moore paint portraits based on images from social networking sites. Above, one of Campbell's Facebook portraits. At left, Moore's "Mandii" (graphite on yupo), sourced from My(death)Space, an archival obituary site of MySpace users. Their work can currently be scene in a joint show titled "Profile Me" at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. From the exhibition description:

Paul Campbell and Dominic Paul Moore introduce contemporary portraiture through sources from increasingly popular internet social environments and bring transitory self-absorbed profiles into the white static walls of Hammes Gallery. In the two-person ehibition entitled "Profile Me" curated by Sara Ebers, Campbell and Moore offer different perspectives and objectives to this current trend.

Campbell and Moore make tangible the intangible and raise issues of identification and social interactions as these virtual profiles are removed from screen to canvas and from your monitor to gallery walls.

Show preview (Dominicpaulmoore.com), "My(death)Space" (Domincpaulmoore.com),

[#1 posted by JBrylan , September 23, 2008 9:47 AM]

I love what people can do these days. I enjoy watching my nephew post new photos he's photoshopped. He is highly self-promotion and he makes himself look like his modeling contract was renewed or he starred in a famous Broadway hit. It's hilarious, especially when people take it serious and think that he really is a model for Gucci or an actor in Hairspray. All photoshop though.

[#2 posted by iveexa , September 23, 2008 10:24 AM]

@#1: Welcome to the new generation of Internet personas/alternate identities. Will he grow up in a world that has always known the ability to do this, in some form, on the grid? Kind of like "I can't imagine a world before the days of Nintendo/the-Internet/cell-phones/etc..

[#3 posted by samwich , September 23, 2008 10:33 AM]

WOW, I think this stuff is really on top of things. PC World #1 worst site was Myspace, so i like how Dominic Paul Moore uses the dead users of that site to comment on the vain and empty quilities their sites have.

[#4 posted by chgocuratorchick , September 23, 2008 2:26 PM]

I love this work. I'm the curator of the show and think Moore and Campbell's works are incredible, contemporary and relevant to our internet dependent and instantly gratified world. The contrast of Moore's intimate profiles and Campbell's large scale in-your-face profiles also mimic the browsing techniques used on these forms of social sites, scanning your friends photos, or in depth reading of their life stories. Hope you enjoy the show and thanks for commenting!

[#5 posted by David Pescovitz , September 23, 2008 5:41 PM]

Thanks for joining the conversation, Sara!