Isabelle de Kleine

Isabelle de Kleine is a painter and video artist originally from Fremantle, Western Australia. Her work is a self-reflection and exploration of the themes of perception, identity and memory. She challenges the boundaries of contemporary portraiture and new media arts by blurring the lines between technology and traditional forms of image making.

Through her artwork, Isabelle explores how imperfectly perfect of our perception and memory can be. “As we are subjective beings our experiences are constantly informing our understanding of the world, these cognitive biases mean that our ‘truths’ might not be universally true. Although one’s perception might not be a perfectly accurate interpretation of the world, there is still great beauty in these imperfections.”

Isabelle’s work is created through multiple stages to reflect the theory that our memory is constantly being rewritten and reimaged. Her paintings begin with a digital collage, created from her own photographs and sourced imagery which are manipulated and disrupted to form the composition. These collages are then reimagined and interpreted through paint.

The works engage the notion of (our) constructed reality through references to fashion and beauty, perception and identity. Furthermore, they employ modernist and contemporary references that allude to the passing of time, allowing the figures to sit in a perpetual state of change. A stillness within the moving and a movement within the still.

Isabelle holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from RMIT University in Melbourne. Since then she has received national recognition for her work and is currently working as an artist in Europe.

Some of her notably achievements include winning the Digital Portrait Award at The National Portrait Gallery (2015), the $10,000 Arkley Prize (2016) at the NotFair Art Fair and the Tolarno Hotel Painting Prize (2015).