Everard Read’s CIRCA Gallery Johannesburg presents Olivié Keck’s exhibition Drop Dead Gorgeous from 11 April – 18 May 2019.
Society’s love affair with ‘crimes of passion’ as entertainment is at an all-time high and has recently been acknowledged as the most watched genre of escapism in the media, mainly by women. With this series of paintings, Keck seeks to treat each of her works as staged crime scenes complete with all the makings of a grand cinematic moment. The lifeless subjects are adorned with rich, colourful garments in luxurious surroundings, all aesthetic embellishments intended to distract from the deathly tragic circumstance. The works embody a playful parody rooted in a more serious questioning of our cultural obsession with depictions of violence and the romanticism of crime as entertainment.
