In his 90-second motion portrait of Lindsay Lohan, Phillips draws on the conventions of his painting that explore the legacies of classical portraiture in relation to the mediated representations of contemporary popular culture.
The film depicts Lohan in a number of classical poses, with references to iconic moments in film, such as Brigitte Bardot smoldering in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, or the searing psychosexual interplay of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman in Ingmar Bergman's Persona. To create a timeless and psychologically charged Hollywood setting, Phillips repurposed a remote Malibu mansion, but freighted it with the speculative desire of contemporary cinematic performance.
Through Phillips's lens, the defiant openness that makes Lohan so compelling on film becomes the ignition key of each image; the pause before action that allows for the identities of actor and director to meld, where expectation and projection contrast with the construction of multilayered identity.
In these full-frame motion portraits of Lohan, Phillips repudiates the cynical expediency associated with the artistic and commercial convention of the screen test by examining and exposing its manipulative and coercive undertones. He thus works to subvert this carefully constructed form, presenting Lohan as released from acutely mediated narrative representation.
Lindsay has an incredible emotional and physical presence on screen that holds an existential vulnerability, while harnessing the power of the transcendental—the moment in transition. She is able to connect with us past all of our memory and projection, expressing our own inner eminence. -Richard Phillips