Richard Learoyd: Still/Life @McKee

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color images, framed in white and mounted with no mat, and hung in the entry and the main gallery space broken up by two smaller dividing walls. The works are unique Ilfochrome prints, ranging in size from 48x48 to 48x88 (or reverse). The images were taken between 2011 and 2013. A thin catalog of the show is available from the gallery. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: As the summer is now upon us, our local movie theaters are starting to fill up with usual crop of big budget blockbusters, those warm weather benchmarks of broad based American culture. If this year's calendar is any guide, it looks to be another season of massive explosions, car chases, smashes and crashes, a continuous assault on our senses with ever increasing pace and intensity. From the perspective of these offerings, it seems we all long to be 13 year old boys, caught in a video game populated by superheroes and obvious bad guys.

With this kind of contemporary story telling as a backdrop, Richard Learoyd's camera obscura portraits feel like outright rebellion, a blatant, unrepentant reversal of priorities. They are consciously slow, our frenetic lives paused for a moment, that pause stretched and extended until our blunted awareness becomes sharp again. His portraits and still lifes are hurricanes of stillness, where the enveloping silence allows us to quiet ourselves down and really look. The pictures reveal themselves in delicate increments, where the luminosity of skin, the texture of hair, and the purity of curvature add up to personal uniqueness, and where tiny imperfections are the emblems of personality.

In many of Learoyd's previous portraits, his subjects typically stood alone in a cone of light, posed in a kind of dead-eyed numbness, lost in a reverie of mute introspective solitude. In these most recent works, the sitters offer a little more subtle expression and a little more uneasy tension. Agnes sits draped in a luxurious dark brown fur, her tangle of hair swirled into loose elegance, her lips a hint of dark red; but her expression isn't blank like before - it mixes a hint of weary glamour with an undercurrent of hard resolve, making her all the more mysterious.

Learoyd's nudes are more intricately posed this time as well. Vanessa hangs gracefully with one arm in the air, her right arm gently crossed over, resting near a bruise on her left leg. Tiny Phie stands in stockings, leaning against the edge of a table, her thin frame pulled tight in a slight twist, her ribs unsettlingly revealed under her skin. And Vanessa lies on the same table, covered in diaphanous black cotton and turned away, her right arm crossed back over her chest. In each case, Learoyd has gone further than simple standing bodies, giving us more to hold onto.

While Learoyd's earlier still lifes generally left me cold, I think this newest group is much stronger. Strung up and trussed like Araki bondage nudes, his flamingos and rabbits hang with limp tragedy, the spread of a wing or the line of a drooping neck becoming a kind of lifeless dance. His severed horse's head goes further, mixing the perfection of the tight depth of field with the revulsion of the dripping blood, finding a balance that is grotesquely engaging.

I think Learoyd has often run the very real danger of falling into the "stone faced girl looking over her shoulder" cliché which is all too prevalent in contemporary photography; some of his earlier portraits were too haltingly deadpan for me. Luckily, his technique is undeniably innovative and it has consistently produced glorious light and staggering detail. But on their own, even these aren't enough to make durable photographs. This show is evidence that his mastery of his process has begun to open up new creative avenues. An evolving sense of composition and a willingness to explore nuances of emotion and expression are both on view here, making both the nudes and the still lifes more fresh and compelling. Learoyd is continually paring the portrait form down to its essences, and when he gets it just right, his pictures suck us into their astonishing private world, focusing our easily distracted attention and centering us on the overlooked subtleties of individuals. They offer a look at unadorned quiet beauty that we have often forgotten could actually be real.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $65000 and $80000, based on size. This represents a steady step up from his last show at the gallery in the fall of 2011. Learoyd's prints have very little secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail is likely the best/only option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Review: New Yorker (here)

Richard Learoyd: Still/Life
Through June 21st

McKee Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10151

Richard Learoyd: Portraits and Figures @McKee

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 large scale color images, framed in white and mounted with no mat, and hung in the entry and the single large gallery space. The works are unique Ilfochrome prints, ranging in size from 58x48 to 48x88 (or reverse). The images were taken between 2009 and 2011. A catalog of the show is available from the gallery for $30. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Richard Learoyd's camera obscura portraits encourage a kind of slowness that has almost been lost in our 21st century world; they are a throwback to the kind of imagery we associate with the greats of European portrait painting, albeit with a crispness that can only come from photography. They allow the viewer to stand and really look at another person, to quietly observe and explore the nuances of her face, hair, and clothing, down to the minute details that we would normally miss in our haste. The dull grey background offers no distractions, and the soft light directs the gaze back to the sitter, where delicacy and vulnerability have been gracefully exposed.

Learoyd seems to be optimizing his artistic process over time; there are a higher percentage of magical portraits in this show than in his previous exhibit, and there are a handful images here that are truly engrossing. The sitters are understated and unconventional in their simple beauty, but striking nonetheless when looked at with such meditative intensity. When he gets the balance just right, the pictures alternate between the specifics of a young woman and the shimmering abstraction of something more universal and metaphorical (the spell is broken in the images of grizzled and tattooed men, who seem too literal). The fold of a gauzy blouse, a drape of red hair, a mesmerizing stare, a gentle shoulder of translucent skin: these are the small facts that suddenly seem so inspired and breathtaking.

Since all the images are unique, I have begun to get the feeling that there are astounding Learoyds and just OK Learoyds, and honing in on one of the best ones is very important. Nancy Recovered, Carla 2, Carla Nude, Tatiana in Patterned Dress 1, and The End of Youth were my particular favorites, with the rest dropping off into a zone where the enchantment is quite a bit less successful. But these few are still worth a special detour, if only as a reminder of just how spectacular portraiture can be.
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Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $45000 and $50000, based on size. Learoyd's prints have very little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the best option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Review: New Yorker (here)

Richard Learoyd: Portraits and Figures

Through October 29th

McKee Gallery

745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10151

Richard Learoyd, Unique Photographs @McKee

JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 large scale color images, framed in white and mounted with no mat, and hung in a single large gallery space. The works are unique dye destruction prints, ranging in size from 58x48 to 73x48 or reverse. The images were taken between 2007 and 2009. This is Learoyd's first solo show in the US and the first show of photography at McKee. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Richard Learoyd's larger than life portraits and still lifes have a distinctly 19th century quality to them, albeit with a modern twist. Using a room-sized camera obscura, the muted color images have a very shallow depth of field: some areas have extremely sharp detail, while others fade into shadowy blurs. Similarly, the light is concentrated on the figure's faces, creating a tunnel vision-like cone of darkness around the central subject, reminiscent of early photography. But these are not hand held dauguerreotype or tintypes to be savored alone; they are massive color images of modern women that cover entire walls.

The best of the pictures are the subtle posed portraits: women gazing into space, sleeping in a chair, or looking directly at us with unsmiling faces; the simplicity of a flowered shirt or a melancholy expression punctuated by dark eyebrows stands out against the utilitarian grey backdrops. Personalities quietly come forth. The still lifes are altogether less enticing: images of mirrors, a deflated shark and a fish heart in a net of black string seem to be trying harder than necessary to grab our attention, and the magic ageless quality of the portraits is somehow lost when applied to the inanimate objects.

Overall, there is something different going on in these understated and unusual portraits, and I would have preferred to have seen a deeper sample of them to wrestle with it further.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $35000 and $42000. Learoyd's images have virtually no secondary market history, so gallery retail is the only option for interested collectors at this point. While portraits aren't a fit for our collection, I liked the sleeping woman, Agnes in Red Dress on White Chair, 2009, the best. As an aside, there is also a single Learoyd portrait in the current ICP show (review later this week).

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• NY Times review (here, scroll down)

Richard Learoyd, Unique Photographs
Through October 31st

McKee Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10151