DODI REIFENBERG

The portrait works of Reifenberg have a special character insomuch as they are generated from small cut-up elements derived from found and collected plastic bags. In an artistic sense Reifenberg is a bagman in the most literal way. What begins with the use of a photographic source as an aide memoire, and as an instrumental point of departure, is then translated by small cut-up sections (or slivers) of a plastic bags that are meticulously assembled and affixed in a manner that is visually analogous to a collage-mosaic. In consequence each cut-up plastic element forms both the image and the necessary light and dark modelling of the realised representation. Having been placed on a stretcher the ground or surface of the image is also derived from an original plastic bag source. In works like B.H.Obama and H.G.Wells (2008) we are able to see the meticulous and laborious build up of the portrait images, the visual appearance being in part like traditional mosaic and the application of..