White Trash noble portraits by Kim Alsbrooks
American artist Kim Alsbrooks has created quite curious and still very beautiful series White Trash – portraits of noblemen on garbage – crushed beer cans. The artist’s belief – Nothing says irony like crushed beer cans painted with the portraits of the social elite. Kim Alsbrooks mixes metaphor with her silhouettes on smashed pieces of garbage. These are sure to raise an eyebrow.

Kim Alsbrooks developed The White Trash Series featuring class distinctions. With the juxtaposition of the portraits from museums, once painted on ivory, now on flattened trash like beer cans and fast food containers, the artist sets out to even the playing field, challenging the perception of the social elite in today’s society”.

” … a clutch of beer cans … crushed flat. On the surface of each was painted a bust dressed in 18th century collars and frocks, and posed as if standing for Gainsborough himself. The aristocratic air of the subject clashes with the dispossibility of the medium to create an exquisite tension suggesting volumes about the nature of family portraits and the value of art itself.”

White Trash noble portraits by Kim Alsbrooks