ANNA TOK ART

About the cycle of works "Youth in faces"

“Youth in Faces” is a collection of images in portraits dedicated to modern youth. In this series of works I study human reflection on certain trends set by a neural network. The popularity of social networks, especially Instagram, has made its own adjustments to everyday life and human psychology. For example, it is very interesting to observe the phenomenon of “vanity fair” in accounts, the “chase” for likes and what this means for everyone.

The prototypes for portraits are young people of completely different professions: engineers, actors, teachers and others, as well as talented children of their talented parents. These can be found in any city in Russia. Each with their own achievements and skills, they have one thing in common: love for the business, which for someone has become a profession. The most important to me was imagery in the characters in my portraits. A certain secret that is reflected on a person’s face. This was what inspired the choice of sitters.

The works were performed in the genre of storytelling. This method is illustrative, therefore it allows us to reflect the latest trends in society, namely the transition to the world of social networks. The popularity of one such application makes the use of its inherent designs, filters and effects recognizable. For example, in portraits I often used a gradient background. I also resorted to mixing such trends as pop art and hyperrealism. This helped to reveal the modernity of the images without losing the value of classical painting.

“Youth in Faces” is a long-term project. Most of the participants live and work in my hometown, Penza. In the future I would like to collect more the characters and heroes from different parts of the globe.