about-face (n., v.) def.: a turn made so as to face the opposite direction.

About Face  is less about portraiture, and more about taking the traditional definition of portraiture and turning it on its side -- or completely around -- in an opposite direction.

Traditionally, a portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer. Most early representations of the human face that are clearly intended to show an individual are of ancient rulers, and tend to follow idealizing artistic conventions, rather than the individual features of the subject's body.

Some of the earliest surviving painted portraits of people, who were not rulers, are the Greco-Roman funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypt. These are almost the only paintings from the classical world that have survived, apart from frescos, sculptures and portraits on coins or medallions.

Justin Bower, Rebecca Campbell, Salomon  Huerta and Roni Stretch  are some of the most prolific contemporary artists who use the concept of "the portrait" not as a way of identifying or glorifying a particular person, but as a form of expressing ideas about how our environment - interfaced with technology, and sorely sprinkled with occasional bigotry, misogyny, violence, nostalgia and exceptionalism -- permeates our world views and cultural identities. The result is a more subjective interpretation of what the human facial form represents as it is used to re-identify, remove, hide, veil, disguise, distort or obliterate the face, altogether. In the end, the result is less about the face as a form of identification, or an expression of idealized beauty, strength or heroism, but more a commentary on the psychological and social implications that ensue: superficiality and the commodification of the human face and body; a re-interpretation of facial expression and body language; the inevitable instability of human presence on this planet as technology, climate and socio- and geo-political events play out; the human condition as it relates to mortality and immortality; and the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual connectivity as humans interact with one another--as artist and artwork interacts with viewer.