Multimedia artist Ken Lum’s series Portrait-Repeated Text is a striking social commentary and contemporary must-see. Each piece is composed of two parts: a photographic portrait and an accompanying graphic text. This pairing creates a dramatic and impressively human scenario for the viewer, even without any real evidence to validate the subject’s implied struggle.
Lum explains his methodology saying, “What I was interested in originally was to somehow bring in elements that I saw, dominating elements in public streetscapes, to draw them in, collate them together, and transfer them into the gallery context.”
Ken Lum is a Vancouver born artist. He currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, and recently exhibited as part of the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
text by Linnea Stephan