Gabi Trinkaus, an artist who refers to herself as a ‘media thief’. Her work grabbed my attention as she takes a flawless face then proceeds to distort it creating an unnatural look and questions whether that face is still considered to be perfect. It’s very similar to the way in which the media works, taking a piece of someones face/body and updating the quality of it. Although Trinkaus may not directly make the face look perfect and flawless, she experiments with skin tones, hair & eye colours, portraying reality. The fact that in real life no one looks like the people in the magazines, not even those actual people. One of my personal favourite pieces by Trinkaus is called ‘Collagen’. Its a collage of a blue eyed brunette however all features are visibly uneven which could refer to the aftermath of plastic surgery. The shades of skin are mainly light however on the right shoulder there are some darker areas which look like bruising again could reflect to healing after surgery. This picture to me is showing how much we as a society experiment to try improve the way we look. From the smallest things such as a splash of makeup, a change of hair colour to surgical procedures like eye lifts, nose jobs, skin pigmentation and cheek implants. The realisation is that no one will ever be 100% happy with the way they look and Trinkaus definitely portrays this message throughout her work.
Trinkaus titles her work with either short phrases or one word but they always sum up the image in one, such as a piece called ‘rethink’. If you were to look at this image from afar you would most likely think it was simply an image of a pretty young women however look closer and you are left to ‘rethink’ as the title suggests. Trinkaus has taken what seems to be a page of a magazine featuring a girl showing you how to get ‘a healthy natural look’ as this is the caption in the top left hand corner. She has then carefully blended different skin tones with the use of collage which creates a slightly uneven skin tone particularly on the forehead and chin which is commonly where many people actually suffer with this. A few purple tones run through the hair which clearly contrasts with the ‘natural look’ the image was originally portraying. The shape of the face remains generally normal however the left eye has been enlarged and also is more of a grey toned blue in comparison to the right eye, overall on this image Trinkaus creates slight imperfections of the features on the women which could be an attack on photoshop within magazines and infact no one is as flawless as people appear to be in the media.
One piece in particular by Trinkaus that interests me is called ‘non surgical’, a black and white mugshot of a women done in collage with a very basic sketched outline towards the neck and shoulders. The hair is definitely the main feature within this piece, dark black hair with a very thick long fringe. The fringe could represent concealment, as it hands just over the eyelids and covers past the temples hiding much of the face. The facial expression is rather absent and downcast which is definitely emphasised by the dark tones amongst the whole piece. In relation to the title and the image it could be that although the female pictured is surgery free she’s unhappy with her appearance or that in some cases in modern day society having no surgery comes with negatives for example jealousy on behalf of others . The face gradually becomes lighter into the neck apart from the dark line which appears on the neck, this could be interpreted as a cut or even a birthmark something which the women may see as being an imperfection.
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