Up close and
impersonal

OUT OF THE CLOSET: Funk’s Gore-Tex-inspired work

by CHRISTINE REDFERN

In 2001, Winnipeg-based painter Karel Funk moved to New York City to pursue a masters degree in fine arts at Columbia University. What struck him was how you could find yourself on the subway “so close to a stranger that you could examine them up close in a way that you never would be able to when you are socializing with a friend.” Last week, the Mirror had the opportunity to talk with Funk about the inspiration behind his hyper-realistic acrylic portraits, which are now on view at the Musée d’art contemporain.

Karel Funk: In these urban settings, you are able to get close to a stranger and you are able to be a voyeur and see all these intimate details about their clothing, their personal effects, their face, their hair. I wanted to try to put that kind of information and detail into a painting to allow the viewer to get that close to a portrait of somebody and have that experience. Where they are able to look at the surfaces of a stranger and not have the stranger gazing back at them—of someone completely unaware of the viewer’s presence.

Mirror: How come you only paint guys? I read in the catalogue that you wanted to avoid the “male gaze” of art history—is that the case?

KF: Definitely, in the earlier portraits, I wanted the viewer to be a voyeur that is looking objectively at this stranger and I didn’t want the potential for there to be any kind of a sexual gaze. I felt if I introduced the male gaze into the series, there was the potential for that, so I was being cautious to not allow that to happen. However, in the newer work, there are times where the entire person’s identity is masked behind the clothing. You don’t see them so they become more androgynous. It might be a female under the jacket, it might be a male; the identity is completely obscured.

M: And there are no settings in the works. When did you start painting the figures with blank backgrounds?

KF: It was when I realized that I was more interested in the techniques and the formal aspects than I was in the narrative. As I said earlier, I became interested in the intimate relationship you can have with a stranger on the street, and I wanted to subdue the narrative and make it more about the abstract relationship to the figure. By putting the figure into a white background, it eliminates the potential for a narrative to take over.

M: Why are your sitters always wearing outdoor clothing? I notice that you say it is because of functionality, not fashion…

KF: Exactly, everybody has an outdoor shell like a Gore-Tex jacket. The choice is much more about function and not fashion. Again, it reveals much less about the subject’s identity than if there were articles of clothing that would suggest a fashion sense, personal identity or wealth. It would add more to the narrative about the person and I want the portrait to really be a neutral presence, a very mysterious presence. Again, somebody you would just see on the street very quickly—an average person in an urban setting.

M: You paint from photographs that you take of your friends in your studio—I’m just wondering if you buy a lot of jackets?

KF: I have more jackets than I need to wear.

Karel Funk’s portraits are at the Musée d’art
contemporain until Jan. 6. Info: (514) 847-6226