FRIEND ME: PORTRAITS OF FACEBOOK  

At the time of this exhibition, Facebook, then a growing platform, hosted only 800,000 profiles. Today, it boasts over 3 billion along with numerous political and social controversies. Freeman’s exhibition Friend Me: Portraits of Facebook featured 196 acrylic paintings depicting international art and culture figures such as Tracey Emin, Anselm Kiefer, Larry Gagosian, and Yoko Ono. 

Using Facebook as both a reference and source, Freeman painted portraits from 'friends' profile photos to engage directly with the digital age. While each portrait focused on the individual, transforming digital images into painted expressions of flesh and spirit, the exhibition as a whole served as an installation, capturing a segment of the Facebook community and a glimpse of humanity.

CAROLE FREEMAN FRIEND ME: PORTRAITS OF FACEBOOK December 1, 2011 - January 7, 2012Main Gallery Opening Reception Thursday, December 1, 2011, 6-9 PM

Edward Day Gallery is pleased to present new work by artist Carole Freeman. With this exhibition, Freeman focuses on the portrait, a subject matter that she has pursued through various series, this time taking the social networking megasite Facebook as her frame of reference. Having originally joined Facebook as a means of maintaining a connection with distant family, Freeman quickly discovered the vast community that ceaselessly uploaded images, words and sound to a constant audience, an audience of "friends." As her group of Facebook friends grew, largely comprising fellow artists, cultural producers, art dealers, critics, and educators, Freeman found the (mostly) faces of people's profile pictures, irresistible. She undertook to paint each of her Facebook friends, and here exhibits the near two hundred portraits completed to date. Collectively, the portraits weave a unique tapestry of a global art world-as the population of friends shifts between Facebook devotees-while individually, the works mine a compelling trajectory from individual choice to painted countenance. The Facebook profile picture is a considered image, whether idealized, typical, flaunting, ironic, or clever, and the painted portrait carries its own idiosyncratic proposition. With her largely taxonomical approach, Freeman liberates the portrait from its characteristic obligation to please, but perhaps achieves a legitimate equivalent as it returns portrait of the face one shares among friends. a The gallery is pleased to welcome Jordan Banks, Managing Director of Facebook Canada, and Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, Executive Director of The Stephen Lewis Foundation as special guests at the opening. In honour of World Aids Day coinciding with the opening of the exhibition, a portion of sales will be donated to support The Stephen Lewis Foundation Arts Fund. The exhibition continues until January 7, 2012.