David LaChapelle: From Darkness to Light @Lever House

JTF (just the facts): A total of 5 photographic works, generally unframed and either affixed directly to the walls and windows or hung from the ceiling in the single room lobby space. One large photographic collage (measuring 14'6" by 10'6") is displayed on an inside dividing wall. A group of approximately 14000 rings connected into long paper chains hangs from the ceiling. The other three works are made of translucent photographic stickers; the two circular works are each 8 feet in diameter. All of the works are from 2011. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In recent years, David LaChapelle was been diverging a bit from his fashion and celebrity roots and diving deeper into art historical and religious iconography, albeit updated with a flashy modern sensibility. In his last show, Michael Jackson became took the guise of a saint and Naomi Campbell was the star of a Botticelli restaging. In this lobby exhibit, he updates an icon of 19th century realism, Theodore Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa (here).
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If you've ever stood in front of The Raft of the Medusa in the Louvre, you will certainly remember its immense scale and its punishing savagery. Using corpses from the local morgue as subjects, Gericault created haltingly lifelike recreations of twisted naked bodies in agony. While there is some hope in the desperate waving of a cloth by one of the castaways, I've always thought this seemed like the ultimate in futility, as the massive waves crashed over and engulfed the tiny raft. LaChapelle's version of this same story is layered and collaged swirl of photographic imagery, where cardboard cutouts and watercolor washes add three dimensional Cubist depth to the scene. The difference here is in the nudes; you might just as well call it "anguish in high heels". The male and female bodies have a perfection to them straight out of a fashion spread (washboard abs, artfully grizzled beards), where the fear looks more staged and the suffering looks a bit hollow. Perhaps his restaging is more optimistic, but the trials and tribulations of all these good looking people lack the raw pathos and visceral energy of the original.
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The main area of the lobby is covered with dangling paper chains, the kind pre-schoolers make out of construction paper and staples. LaChapelle's chains are double sided standing nudes, where heads, torsos, and legs get twisted and recombined into an endless connection of anonymous body parts, running the spectrum of light to dark pink. It's an easygoing, straightforward riff, mostly decorative I think. On the glass side walls of the lobby, LaChapelle has affixed two circular areas of translucent stickers, one pink circle of male nudes and one purple circle of female nudes. Perhaps a little like a stained glass window, they seemed more like a petri dish to my eye, with tiny blobs of tadpole humanity swimming in tight swirling circles.
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While I didn't particularly resonate with the end results here, I found some of the process ideas worth thinking about further, including the creating of multi-level surface via the collaging of photographic imagery and the use of transparency to open up the "art against a flat wall" effect.
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Collector's POV: David LaChapelle is represented by Fred Torres Collaborations in New York (here). LaChapelle's work is intermittently available in the secondary markets, ranging in price from $10000 to 140000 in recent years.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Feature: NY Observer (here)

David LaChapelle: From Darkness to Light
Through September 2

Lever House Art Collection

390 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Taryn Simon: Contraband @Lever House

JTF (just the facts): A total of 1075 color photographs, mounted on archival paper, and hung in Plexiglas frames on three, two-sided walls in the single room lobby space. Each of the individual images is sized roughly 6x6. They are then grouped by subject matter onto 16 panels, each 95x71. All of the works were taken in 2009 and printed in 2010. A complete monograph of this project was recently published by Steidl (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Taryn Simon's approach to photography mixes a deadpan documentary style with an undercurrent of cerebral, conceptual ideas that tests the limits of what a photograph can see and communicate. In previous projects, she has photographed people wrongly convicted of crimes at the scenes of their undoing, and made images of objects that have a hidden or indecipherable purpose. In her newest work, she spent five days in the bowels of JFK airport, taking pictures of all the items that were confiscated from passengers and express mail packages. The result is a taxonomy of contraband, a snapshot catalogue of all of the things that fall outside the approved and acceptable.

In this series, Simon's images are basically commercial still lifes: frontal shots of various objects set against neutral white backgrounds. This aesthetic approach depersonalizes the items, making them cold, pared down, documentary facts. Photographically, the images themselves aren't particularly interesting.

But taken together, seen as an extremely long and eclectic list of things that are prohibited, illegal, counterfeit, unlicensed, or undeclared, the objects start to take on a different resonance. They start to create a picture of the edges of our culture, telling stories of the forbidden and illicit, of people who pursue activities that fall outside the norms. They paint a picture of a melting pot of puzzling cultural influences and traditions. They tell us about the global commerce that flows in and out of America like a flood each and every day, meeting our demands, fueled by our desires. They highlight what we find threatening or scary. In short, they provide a surprisingly direct social commentary on what we have decided we are not (and yet we still are).

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So what's on this exhaustive list? Deer blood, Cuban cigars, pirated DVDs, counterfeit Beanie Babies, peyote, moon cakes, pharmaceuticals of various kinds, leaves from endangered species, nesting dolls, bongs, skeletons, berries, chicken feet, sugar cane, unidentified meats, fake watches, seeds, eggshells, pirated handbags, bags of fat, and cigarettes, among many, many others. It's a parade of oddities and curiosities, a set of both the bizarre and the mundane.

This is a show where the backstory is everything, where the context provides the spark of ideas. It's a thoughtful conceptual exercise, bounded by a particular slice of time, and it successfully focuses the viewer on a striking inversion. It forces us to look closely at how we have defined our world by seeing what falls outside its boundaries.

Collector's POV: Taryn Simon is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York (here) and Almine Rech Gallery in Paris and Brussels (here). Simon's work has only just begun to enter the secondary markets in the last year or so, and no definitive price pattern has yet emerged. As such, gallery retail is likely the only real option for interested collectors at this point.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Feature: NY Times Lens (here)
• Current exhibitions: Gagosian Beverly Hills (here) and Almine Rech Brussels (here)

Taryn Simon: Contraband

Through December 31st

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Lever House Art Collection

390 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022