Isabelle McCormick

Twin Cities-based artist Isabelle McCormick employs traditional oil painting techniques and sculptural relief to render virtual space. At the intersection of technology and art history, she examines the relationship between self-surveillance and feminine archetypes that persist across the social media screenscape. Combining gold leaf, glitter, and Swarovski rhinestones with plaster casts and cake decorating techniques, she cultivates a tactile materiality that imitates self-branding. In a hyperbolic world of retouching apps and reality TV, McCormick explores the scopophilic pleasure in curating an online image and consequent chasm between the bodily self and social media façade.