Wise’s Polysemic Primavera

Style Edit #4

Fashion is an important source of inspiration and subject of study for contemporary artist Chloe Wise. Here, I look at how some of her subjects might dress…

She has risen to fame for her saturated portraits often mixing pop cultural elements to criticize consumerism and modern branding, especially from the fashion industry. Her work often includes decaying, melting, or organic perishable elements to signify the pace of consumption.

Chloe Wise is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture, installations and video art. Many of her works are humorous still lives with a modern take on figurative painting. “She explores themes that are easily understood and relatable to us all, such as gender and queerness, the impact of social media on portraiture and how we see things, the relationship our generation has with the body,” said Ashkan Baghestani from Sotheby’s.

Indeed, several of her recent works focus on groups of people she portrays wearing colorful outfits, posing in her studio, referencing Renaissance and Classical portraiture while giving it a social-media friendly selfie-like modern twist. The clothes are important elements of composition grounding the subjects in time and space. “I participate in trends,” Wise told Vogue in 2016. She had several collaborations with fashion labels including with Courreges and Etudes.