Isabelle de Kleine

Says Isabelle de Kleine of her work: "‘Shifting Memory’ is about the idea that memories change and shift over time, details are lost, forgotten and abstracted. In this work I combined flat shades of grey with bright areas of colours and texture to represent these snippets of memory. Moments of realism and clarity are combined with surrealistic, distorted and inverted areas to represent how these memories shift with time.

"Our identities are constantly evolving and developing, yet we exist in a world that needs to define you. Define your art. Define your existence. But how can we be defined if we are inherently abstract in nature? Our memories fade and become distorted, and our perceptions are abstracted by our emotions, cognitive makeup and subconscious biases.

"I draw inspiration from a wide array of sources, including the post-internet art movement, '70s psychedelia and iconographic paintings. The colourful, intricate and haunting works use collage and image manipulation to further explore issues such as the digitalisation of self, the gender revolution and beauty expectations.

"The works have been developed through digital collage and then translated into mixed media paintings, undergoing a lengthy process of abstraction. This represents the notion that memories are always being rewritten and that each time we remember we move further from reality. The integration of technology in the process of creating the works touches on the amalgamation of technology in our lives and identity. Symptomatic of the postmodern digital age, the paintings seek to explore the complexity of human experience and find a beauty within the chaos that is our reality.”