Vitshois’s portrait heads are composed of many faces, hands, and indeterminate body parts excised from glossy style magazines that he collects around the world; this globalized commercial printed matter has been reconfigured into exquisite composite beings of all shades of skin, hair, and eye color, into likenesses of perfect synthesized beings of multiple races, genders, and appearances - perfect cyborgs, that are indeed ideal self images of our times.  

Abstract backgrounds of the paintings - sometimes flatly dark, other times blank and stained with painterly elements -emphasize the tension between the generic and the singular, print and paint, figure and background. Vitshois’ dis-engendered figures exemplify a self-image comprised of de-personalized, objectified bodies of fashion plates - synthetic, mediated selves, as it were; on the other hand, the use of this ready made imagery as material redeems them, as fashion plates are recycled into paintings, installations, and performances. Vitshois body of work comprises fractured identities and multiple geographies, contradictory locations and heterochronic calendars - yet this multiplicity is amalgamated into a significant formal entity that can travel in style across borders and without a passport.  


Sandra Skurvida