Faceless, the most renowned project of artist Coco Dávez, celebrates ten years with a major exhibition that brings together some of the most recognizable portraits of recent pop culture. The Madrid-born artist turns her studio into a colorful gallery where faceless but unmistakable figures from cinema, music, fashion and art parade: from Bowie to Basquiat, from Elton John to Amy, from Jackie and JFK to Thelma and Louise, from Haring to Yayoi Kusama. The exhibition can be visited from this weekend until March in private passes that can be booked on its website.
The exhibition, conceived as a journey through a decade of work, focuses on Faceless, a collection of portraits in acrylic on canvas in which the faces are deliberately erased for the viewer to complete the identity from the silhouette, hairstyle, clothing or color palette. As the artist herself explains, it all stemmed from a “blessed mistake”: a frustrated attempt to paint Patti Smith, whose face ended up covered in cadmium red and cobalt blue, giving rise to the first figure without a face. Since then, these absences have become a way of exploring collective memory and the psychology of color.
Pop Icons by Coco Dávez
The exhibition, installed in her Madrid studio, is presented with 36 works, almost like a living archive with original canvases framed in wood, a limited edition print by Amy, list of works and prices and a montage that allows us to understand the evolution of Faceless from 2015 until today. Beyond the artist’s collaborations with brands like Chanel, Loewe, Disney or Netflix, here what rules is the artist’s own language: flat and vibrant backgrounds, emphatic silhouettes, recognizable winks at first glance and an atmosphere that turns each wall into a small pop altar.
For the Madrid public, the exhibition works as an anthology at home of one of the most influential creators of the current visual scene, a place to meet again with the idols of always, filtered by a contemporary look that has traveled through London, Hong Kong, Paris or Miami, and that now stops in Madrid to celebrate ten years of a project.