Self Portrait (Will Rogers)
2026
Within the blue silhouette frame of a human profile, a surreal landscape unfolds: a skeletal animal skull, likely antelope or gazelle, merges with an impossibly tall tree trunk, its branching antlers reaching upward into clear sky. The composition inverts the traditional portrait, replacing the mind's interior with an external natural vision rendered in warm earth tones and cool blue atmospherics. Israel's signature Hitchcock inspired profile frame transforms the artwork into a sculptural object, creating a visual paradox where the container of thought becomes a window onto landscape and mortality. Part of the ten print suite 'Where is My Mind?', this work exemplifies the artist's conceptual investigation of identity, perception, and the constructed nature of the self portrait in contemporary image culture.
- Medium
- Archival pigment print in artist's frame
- Framed
- Signed
- Yes
- Spotted At
- Gallery · Pace Prints
Notes
Pace Prints, 'Where is My Mind?', April 30 – June 6, 2026. From Alex Israel's 'Self Portrait' series; Hitchcock-inspired profile silhouette frame designed by the artist. Set of all 10 prints from the series is also available framed at $175,000.
For Sale — $20000
More by Alex Israel
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Alex Israel makes images, objects and experiences that balance an elevated, almost debased rush of visual pleasure with a scalpel-like intellectual sharpness. Like Los Angeles, the artist’s home and—in many ways his most fertile medium—his works find their depth in the seamlessness of their surface and the artifices that construct them and which they in turn deconstruct. It is clear that the artist, one of the most important voices of his generation, is able to instrumentalize our star-filled and wide-eyed Hollywood dreams and collective memories within a specific lineage of post-war American painting and conceptual, intellectually driven art making.
As It Lays
2012
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