The New York Collection (2014)

This collection was originally assembled for exhibition at Couture Fashion Week 5-7 September, New York, as part of New York Fashion Week 2014. It has since travelled to Syracuse, NY for inclusion in an exhibition accompanying Syracuse Fashion Weekend, 11 October 2014. The collection was displayed at Kaspikara Academy of Arts, Cali, Colombia, 11 December – 24 December 2014.

The majority of the 10 pieces in this collection were created throughout 2014 especially for these exhibitions.

‘Beaded Lace’ 16″ x 16″ [mixed media: paper and beads]

‘Modern Love’ 16″ x 16″ paper collage

‘The Butterfly Effect’ 16″ x 16″ paper collage

Accompanying this collection is a brochure which reads:

‘Moss 1300’ 12″ x 12″ mixed media [paper and beads] Created late 2013 and originally exhibited in Brainerd, Minnesota

“Melanie Ezra is a UK-based fine artist who mostly works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music.”Since graduating in 2010 Ms. Ezra has exhibited her art nationally and internationally. Her collages and photographic works have shown at Studio Voltaire London, as well as galleries in Germany, Italy, Brazil, and several shows in New York and in Minnesota. Her artworks are held in private collections all over the world. She holds a deep personal commitment to community projects at home in Swansea, UK.

“Each collage is a physical reconstruction using tweezers and scalpel and is meticulously recreated in painstaking detail. By reworking her own imagery she questions the veracity and accuracy of a memory of original experiences. Ms. Ezra alters and amends details so subtly that the viewer often has to look twice to believe what they are seeing.

“The imperceptible layers of paper, beads, and occasionally pins; give an almost 3D single plane effect which reanimates the photograph on which it is based. The deconstructed subject matter becomes virtually irrelevant since it is the effect of the reconstruction that the viewer is inevitably drawn to. These remarkable narratives speak volumes as to the potential of the photograph.

‘Olympia’ 4″ x 4″ paper collage

‘Crystal’ 4″ x 4″ paper collage

‘Lucky’ 4″ x 4″ paper collage

“Ms. Ezra is always keen to expand her horizons and is now working as large as 16” x 16” and beyond whilst retaining the accuracy and miniscule detail of her smaller works. She openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential. She is constantly considering David Hume’s notion that “man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and motion”. This persistent examination means that indubitably the collages she creates are full of options and choices rather than mistakes or miscalculation. They are a true reflection of the artist’s mind concentrated into amazing detail and painstaking accuracy.”