Andrew Smenos is an artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. This painting is one of many from his current series, that deals with stuffed animals. Some of the animals are place over paintings, and some of his work is just of them alone. The whole idea of this series is displacement, and contrast. Taking images that are different not only by concept, but overall appearance, and combining them on a single plain. To me, these paintings are a visual creation of the world we perceive, and the world we can create. With a pencil and paper, we can create beautiful, and mesmerizing images that cannot exist in reality. That's what these paintings are. The stuffed animals are there to snap us back into the real world.
The nude female is depicted in such a dry, idealized, and academic manner that the beady-eyed, bulb-headed, and downright adorable stuffed animals really do seem to question what we should value as art.
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