American Landscape-5, 2004

Julião Sarmento was a Portuguese artist and painter. His multimedia approach to art incorporates the usage of combinations of film, audio, video, paintings, sculpture, and installations in his work. The exhibitionTerra Incognita even used a 3D printer to capture a dancer's body for a sculpture reminiscent of Degas. He has been greatly inspired by literature and architecture, as well as heavily influenced by the Postmodern movement, wherein pre-existing forms of media are re-adapted to create new meaning. Sarmento is known for his highly-texturized painting style. Graphite creates imagery from a dense field of paint. Thus, in a few ways, Sarmento's work is a study in layers: he also often works in erasures, and then draws on top of those erasures. The effect is as speculative, fragmented, and enigmatic as what the subjects of his art might be thinking. Typically, Julião Sarmento focuses on the concept of interpersonal relationships. He is famous for his mannequin-like depictions of women- who, like mannequins, are sometimes headless. The human form, in Sarmento's art, is vulnerable and searching for its place. His work contains multitudes of implications about psychology and sensuality, voyeurism and boundaries. The headless woman bent over a chair in Lick My Eyes (2005), which utilizes text along with images, seems to confront her relationship with God and with the outer world at large. (Artist website)