Seb Patane adapts found imagery to create his eerie portraits and tableaux. He selects vintage printed materials and photographic prints to which he feels an immediate connection. His appropriation of these aged and discarded images becomes a sort of second chance for them. From this basis, Patane then adds dramatic, hairy clouds of ink, resulting in images that are unnerving and unsettling. Patane has said, “I like to confuse people; that can be true about my work but that’s because I think that through confusion you can achieve a better kind of truth.” The truth in Miss Esme Beringer seems to be that any portrait conceals certain elements. The concealment of these elements is cause for uneasiness and the kind of nervous laughter that is usually the result of situations and imagery that cannot readily be decoded.

Label from Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One: Humor and Satire from the Collection, November 19, 2016–March 19, 2017