Portrait

Self portraiture occupies an unusual place in artist Hany Armanious’ practice. Armanious is renowned for sculptures that transform everyday objects through the process of casting. Working primarily with pigmented polyurethane resin, he creates uncanny replicas that mimic the appearance of stone, timber, cardboard and metal, unsettling our assumptions about materials and the authenticity of an object. In Portrait, these longstanding concerns are turned towards the artist himself.

Armanious presents himself via a cast of his own nose, reducing the premise of the self portrait to a single recognisable feature. Embedded within a form resembling a weathered block of carved stone, this fragment of the artist’s face becomes almost unfamiliar, even to the artist himself who has described it as a composite belonging both to him and to an unknown other. Resting improbably on two screw-top wine bottle lids and supported by a base that convincingly imitates masonite, a type of engineered hardboard, the sculpture blurs the distinction between original and copy, natural and artificial. Portrait reflects Armanious’ enduring interest in transformation, inviting viewers to consider how identity is recognised and whether even the most familiar aspects of ourselves are ever truly fixed. Displayed alongside more traditional sculptural reliefs, the work playfully replicates, but also subverts, our expectations of three-dimensional portraiture.

Purchased with funds provided by donors 2024
© Hany Armanious