Published by JRP|Editions. Edited by Clément Dirié. Text by Donatien Grau, Isabelle Graw, Eileen Myles, Westrey Page, Juliane Rebentisch.
This first comprehensive monograph on American artist Eliza Douglas (born 1984) offers a complete overview of her idiosyncratic and reflexive painting practice developed since the mid-2010s. Her "meta-paintings"—in which she stages images drawn from art, fashion, consumer and underground cultures—are one possible answer to the question of what painting can be in the 21st century. While her pictorial vocabulary recalls aspects of Pop art, Abstract Expressionism and Hyperrealism, her paintings also interrogate the construction of the image, its circulation and fluidity. Mostly working in series—disembodied hands and feet, male models in minimalist interiors, birds, packets of cigarettes in shirt pockets, exhibition views of Josh Smith's shows, crumpled T-shirts—this results in an ensemble of new yet recognizable images that are sensual but cold, laced with detached humor, sometimes tainted with gothic romanticism and immediately photogenic. Encompassing Douglas' manifold work, the publication also includes her practice in exhibition-making, as well as her activities as a musician, performer and model.
