Askhkan Honarvar Analysis

'Vanitas Collage'

Askhkan Honarvar was born 1980 in Shiraz, Iran he currently works and lives in the Netherlands. Honarvar tries to capture and portray the unavoidable beauty by accepting the darker sides of human 'nature'. This piece 'Vanitas Collage' was created using mixed media, he collaborated with Kathi Kauder who is a stylist and fashion and photographer Sabrina Theissen. The series of 'Vanitas Collages' were published in November 2011 in I Love You Magazine. I chose to analyse this piece because I am planning to make similar work and use the same mixed media techniques.

To further my understanding of his work I looked at his website and TrendLand a magazine website which showed all of the 'Vanitas Collages'. ' Equilibrium(equal) between life and death' this quote describes this piece well because I can see how the artist is trying to represent life and death, for example the dying roses could be representing death where as the actual human model in the image could be representing life. The title does inform me well because the word 'Vanitas' describes paintings that contain symbols of death or change, which is portrayed well in the image. "It shows the human body in a way wouldn't normally see and by taking the other body parts and putting them in different places forces us to see the beauty in the body like the beauty in nature." The different unusual sections of these pieces highlight his view of the human body, that each human has a different image a different look the way people portray or display beauty comes in different ways.

This image is a collage made up of photography, illustrations and cut outs from magazines. The main model which I believes represents life and illustration cut outs layered over the photo. The colours used are quit  soft for example the flowers are soft dull coral shades, this adds a soft and natural element to the image. Where as the most outstanding colour is bright and bold shade of burgundy, I think its very solid and covering all of her body and parts of the body that are usually on display such as the eyes and hands or clear. The clear details in the eye is outstanding compared to the other images in the piece because its in black and white, I think the eye represents all that we see around us as humans whether good or bad. The arms are reaching out of the central image, I think the different tones of colour on the arms represent different races and people.

I chose to look at this work because I thought that the collage was interesting  with the photos and illustration gathered together, which is what I like about this piece. I don't like the some of the illustration/images layered on because I don't see how they work or what they represent, the meaning is not very clear. Also the colours used could of had more variety to them. This work has inspired me to try and make collages and experiment with photography and illustration, try to use images that are realistic and animated.