Long Beach artist/photographer/blogger/etc...
Kicking off the Tragically Hipster Rau Art Reviews (RAR)...
Just visited LACMA today, so I figure I'll kick this off with some comments about a couple of exhibitions currently on display there...
First off...
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
May 23–September 14, 2008
This is a remarkably powerful show for the relatively small space allotted for it.
The exhibition covers several bodies of work by the noted photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia (aka "PL"). These bodies of work include the projects known as: Hustlers, Streetwork, Heads, Lucky 13, and Thousand. But the exhibition largely intersperses the projects (with the exception of Thousand).
Hustlers and Streetwork are older projects working in varying ways capturing fleeting moments (often vulnerable moments), but approaching the work in two entirely different ways. In Hustlers PL carefully stages these moments in hotel rooms or on the streets of Los Angeles casting hustlers as his protagonists, and in Streetwork he captures these fleeting moments in a more candid way on the busy streets of major cities worldwide.
By contrast, both Heads and Lucky 13 take a much more systematic approach. In Heads PL sets up a system by which he candidly captures portraits of pedestrians on the New York City sidewalks. Entirely unaware of the photographer's presence, isolated and captured in extraordinary detail, and thus left vulnerable to our observation, these pieces seem to quitely speak volumes about their subjects. Lucky 13 on the otherhand depicts lone pole dancers in the midst of their seductive act... but this is project is far more than just T&A (see more below)...
To round out the bodies of work included here, Thousand is a collection of 1,000 Polaroid images produced over years of PL's art and commercial practice as a photographer. Though 1,000 seems somewhat unimpressive by today's digital standards, the idea of producing and exhibiting 1,000 instant images was huge at the time of this undertaking. This collection of images displayed somewhat randomly on several shelves extending across 3 walls, produces an unparalelled peek into the working practice of a photographers. Test prints, lighting trials, camera experiments, personal moments, random points of interest, and curious textures all share equal billing as the work product of an active artist (akin perhaps to a painter's notebook of sketches).
I have always loved PL's Heads. I am facinated by the people depicted as well as the complicated system derived to capture them in their most natural, unsuspecting, and vulnerable moments. As a photographer, I am further impressed with his technical acuity in all of the remaining projects, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing so much of the "behind the scenes" work in Thousand. But honestly, most of the remaining bodies of work didn't resonate with me as strongly as Heads.... Until I heard PL discuss his work at LACMA earlier this month....
I attended an artist discussion with PL on June 10th, and while most of the discussion was entirely un-earthshattering, one huge revelation forever transformed my understanding and appreciation of Lucky 13...
Philip-Lorca diCorcia lives and works in New York. The events of 9/11 affected him deeply, but one image haunted him more than any others... The image of desperate persons diving head first out of the burning towers and flying through the air to their death. PL is deathly afraid of heights (afraid of falling from heights), and this image truly haunted him. Yet somehow, he was inspired to view these pole dancers as a related image, an allusion to flight, but infact a descent, often head first, spinning down to the floor.
Perhaps he sees these dancers as somehow reenacting the event, giving the victims' suffering a martyr's romatic allure. Perhaps by turning the violence of the original on it's head with the seduction of the latter, it allowed him to deal with the horror. PL didn't expound on this inspiration for the work... but it undoubtedly provided a compelling context to critically re-evaluate it.
Secondly...
BCAM - The Inaugural Installation
February 2008 - Way too freakin' long
The new Broad Contemporary Art Museum located at LACMA... I'm bored.
Why the hell does this exhibition need to be up for 9 months!
For my full rant... go read the entry on my personal blog...
I can't be bothered to copy it here... I'm too bored...
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