Derek Gores at Foosaner Art Museum

There’s a fascinating exhibit at my local art museum right now. It features the work of Derek Gores, who makes collages from magazine pages.

Like this.

Isn’t it wonderful? As you can see, he interprets things in a somewhat abstracted way, which I think is VERY compelling. Check out this detail shot.

Don’t you love it? Here’s another one, about 12 x 12.

And the detail shots. The eye:

And the mouth.

Are you blown away yet? How about this?

In his collage, Gores let the woman’s dress disappear into the background. The museum curator took it one step further, finding matching wallpaper to add to this one wall.  Brilliant!

By the way, several of Gore’s pieces have a high fashion sensibility. In them, he often adds a cat, which is a whimsical nod to the cat walk. I love that!

Probably the most memorable piece in the installation is, in itself, an installation. It’s a 3D collage filling an entire room with hanging pieces of paper.  You can walk all the way around it, but the image is only discernible when viewed from front and center.

Can you tell what it is?

Here’s the reference photo.

This is just a taste of this amazing exhibit. I’ve seen it three times and I’ll be going again this week, because I keep taking people to see it. If you’re in the Melbourne, FL area, you’ll WANT to see this exhibit! It’s at the Foosaner Art Museum, which is free, through March 23rd. If you can’t make it to the museum, I encourage you to check the collages on his website.

Now, I want to grab some paper and a glue stick!

Ellen Lindner