Deep Breath in White Bathroom with Orange Lighting and Red Falling Jean Pants
Christian Holstad
American, born 1972
2003
A cut-and-pasted printed-paper collage that stages two nearly identical male figures—their bodies filled with paisley patterning and their heads and boots rendered in glossy red—posed in a sunlit, retro bathroom to explore intimacy and theatricality within the domestic.
What strikes first is the jarring collage effect: ornate, fabric-like paisley mapped onto human forms outlined in white, set against a warm, tiled 1960s-style bathroom so that pattern, color, and scale collide into a staged, uncanny moment.
Holstad updates the collage tradition by fusing commercial imagery, textile motifs, and domestic interiors to unsettle photographic realism and open conversations about identity, desire, and the performance of private life in contemporary culture.
Medium
Cut-and-pasted printed paper on paper
Dimensions
11 5/8 x 11 1/2" (29.5 x 29.2 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift
Accession
1883.2005
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
