Tama Hochbaum Portfolios

Entering the Vault Gallery and exploring my exhibition, VISAGE, FLORA, FACET & BEVEL, you’ll experience, initially, clear images of the artist with my glasses holding center stage. Turning, the viewer moves from the more prominent representation of the self to the second wall and a dissolution of the figure, where my visage is hidden by a COVID mask or blended with floral wallpaper. The dissolution continues on the third wall where one sees a row of multiple exposed self-portraits, with my face again obscured, hidden among the landscape, a kitchen, and my imagination. One turns further and both the trip around the room, and the dissolution of the figure, culminates in compositions where the parts angle, shift and bevel. The individual elements of these geometric pieces are close-ups of brightly colored cups of my daughter’s from years ago, though still in use. These images simultaneously function as formal, colorful, banner-like pieces and, at the same time, as further, more abstracted self-portraits with elements from my life as a mother. As in all of the work here, the viewer is invited to sew together the images, meld the parts, attach the facets to each other for a completed picture, in an act of seeing itself.