Lineage I: Father and Son (From the Lost Archive)

LOT 9

ALIEASE SIMMONS Lineage I: Father and Son (From the Lost Archive) Digital painting [dimensions in inches] Executed in 2025

PROVENANCE:

• Artist's studio

• Direct from the artist

CONDITION: Excellent, with intentional period-appropriate degradation. Museum-quality presentation.

This haunting work stands as one of Simmons' most sophisticated conceptual achievements, an exploration of memory, time, and mortality that transcends technical facility to achieve genuine philosophical depth.

Simmons' conceptual framework is profound: this is not a portrait that has aged, but a portrait created already aged. Her artistic vision imagines not just how people were painted in the 1880s, but how those paintings survive 140 years later the flaking, the oxidation, the spots where pigment has vanished into time.

The father holds his infant child in protective embrace, their faces partially obscured by Simmons' intentional degradation. Yet this obscurity creates profound emotional power. We see the gesture of protection, we sense the love, but the individuals themselves have become anonymous, universal. Every viewer can project their own ancestors onto these fading faces.

Simmons' work asks fundamental questions: What happens when we create art that appears to have survived from the past? Can we explore loss, mortality, and the way memory fails through deliberately fragmented imagery? The answer this work provides is resounding yes.

The execution required extensive research into 19th-century portraiture styles, period photographic techniques, and the physical processes of aging. Simmons then applied sophisticated degradation effects, each crack, each faded spot, each area of loss carefully considered to create emotional impact rather than random damage. The result engages with Gerhard Richter's photo-paintings, Luc Tuymans' memory-based works, and Anselm Kiefer's explorations of time and history.

This work demonstrates that Simmons' practice extends beyond technical mastery into genuine conceptual territory, using new tools to explore perhaps the most human themes imaginable: time, loss, and the fragility of memory. Inquire for availability and acquisition details. Please see "How to Buy"

About the Medium: Created using AI generative tools under Simmons' artistic direction, with traditional aging techniques applied.

• Unframed: 48" × 60" (4' × 5')

• Framed: 56" × 68"