Darryl Westly, Odalisque 1, 2022, Hand-Embellished, Signed, and Numbered Limited Edition Print

Photography and social media are foundational to Chicago-Born and New York-based painter Darryl Westly’s aesthetic language. Abstracting classical reference through hyperrealist representational forms, Westly distills numerous aspects of contemporary visual culture through his techniques and use of color, honed at both the Pratt Institute and Cooper Union, before he was recruited as a finishing painter at Jeff Koons’ studio. His work aims to highlight how our visual culture reflects both the past and present understandings of identity and its production in an increasingly online, image-saturated landscape. Odalisque 1 is a prime example of Westly’s naturalist style, with his vibrant use of color and shape flattening the pictorial space, similar to a pixelated selfies on social media applications, and allowing contemporary references, such as the Hello Kitty doll in the background, to shine forward. Taking inspiration from Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque (1814), the illusory nature of the s