Rollin Leonard at Hunter Shaw Fine Art

At Hunter Shaw, Rollin Leonard’s “About Face” takes the medium of self-portraiture to new heights. In his “Flat Face” series, the artist photographs himself or his subject with an ultra-high resolution camera from three angles and then flattens the images to form one long, extruded face. Two of those works are on view in the gallery, printed out on a large scale that towers over the viewer. Each pore, hair, and blemish is enlarged and rendered crisply, so that the face itself becomes a topological map to be studied. 

The process for his other series on view is a bit different. Leonard distorts the face by taking photographs of himself through droplets of water manipulated into curling organic forms. The resulting images depict the face in twisted and bulging expressions, which the artist collages together in large compositions. Though self-portraiture is one of art history’s oldest genres, Leonard’s innovative techniques elevate the medium to new process-driven heights.

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Photo: Rollin Leonard, “Color From Three Vectors,” (2020). Dye sublimation on polyester, 180 x 90 inches. Photo by Ruben Diaz.