甜蜜的保鲜 - 洛杉矶艺术家Blake Little的新作

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保鲜系列是洛杉矶艺术家Blake Little的新作，将于2015年3月7日到4月18日在洛杉矶的科佩金画廊展出。该系列作品屡获殊荣。不同年龄，背景，体型的人们被蜂蜜包裹，以个人化的形象视人，摄影师敏锐的扑捉到人们的个性，能量，情绪，拍摄出一幅幅感性且独一无二的强大作品。

半透明的甜美蜂蜜是来自大自然的神奇产物，其色彩和粘稠度是无以伦比的视觉“油漆”，在与人体接触时其天生具有的密度，重量，光感，透明度以及粘滞度都都营造绝妙的雕塑感和摄影感。摄影师告诉gooood：“我不希望仅仅拍摄漂亮的人，我希望能够拍摄有趣的，独特的人。”参与的人没有被告诉详细细节，只知道这是一个艺术项目。参与的对象有情侣，婴儿，老人，胖子，年轻人，狗，等等。被蜂蜜包裹的对象各有各自的反应，有的为此陶醉，有的强忍，还有的嬉闹……每个人都不一样，每个人都有自己独特的情感表达方式，这些要素组成了一个颠覆性的，十分成功的肖像系列。

With “preservation”, Blake Little Creates Images
that Are Classical And Primal, Modern And Ancient.
kopeikin Gallery
march 7 – April 18, 2015
2766 S. La Cienega Blvd.
http://kopeikingallery.com/
opening Reception
march 7, 6-8 Pm
artist Q&a And Book Signing
thursday, March 26, 7 Pm

Culver City, CA – Artist Blake Little’s new series, in which his portrait subjects are covered in gallons of honey while being photographed, explores the idea of “Preservation” with stunning, unforgettable results, at Kopeikin Gallery, March 7 – April 18, 2015.

Little joins Kopeikin to present a new exhibition of selected photographs from the Preservation series, marking the release of the project’s monograph, Little’s fourth book, Preservation.

The Preservation photographs have won multiple awards, including American Photography AP29 in 2012 and second place in the “Fine Art: Nudes” category of International Photography Awards in 2013.

This unique process reveals art-historical memes and powerful emotions in sensual, magical, and utterly unique images portraying a range of individuals of varying ages, backgrounds, and body types—each interacting with the sticky-sweet, evocative, sculptural drama of the process in different ways. Available for pre-order from early February, Little will also have copies for purchase and signing at his Opening Reception on March 7 and at the Artist Q&A and Book Signing on Thursday, March 26.

Little had the inspiration for the process in the course of another portrait series; it sprang from the specific narrative iconography of one story, but soon morphed into a broader obsession. An award-winning photographer best known as a portraitist with an uncanny ability to intimately capture the energy and personality of his subjects, he frequently photographs celebrities and high-profile artists. But as Little describes the honey’s specific effects, “It has a way of diffusing the personal qualities of the subject often making them unrecognizable and democratizing the individual with universal iconic qualities.” Since the subjects are forced to close their eyes during the pour, their emotionality expresses itself in other means, like body language, musculature, and controlled or reactive facial expression — heightening their relationship to classical sculpture as from the ancient world of Greece, Rome, and in particular, the volcanic figures of Pompeii.

↑ Devion,back

↑ Katia,closeup

↑ Angelina and Pau

↑ Catherine

↑ Ouriel,back

↑ Tao

↑ Riot

↑ Paul

↑ Lindsay

↑ Isaiah,upright

↑ Moxie

↑ Karen

Blake Little: Sweet Translucence, Living Abstraction Honey. It is one of the most evocative words we have. It’s a food, a scent, and a term of endearment. Its production is one of the most magical of nature’s processes. It’s a metaphor and a symbol, a color, a sweetness, and a frequent element in homemade cures. One thing it typically is not, however, is a raw material of visual art, like paint or clay. But in fact its irresistible physicality is heavy, dense, sticky, and fluid; and its seductive aesthetic properties of luminosity, transparence, refraction, and motion make for compelling sculptural and photographic optics — especially when it comes into contact with the human body.

In Preservation, acclaimed portrait photographer Blake Little executed a simple premise and a singular technique in which his mostly unclothed subjects are covered in gallons of honey while being photographed in the studio. It’s unwieldy, and evidence of that carries through into the pictures, in the faces and bodies of the models and in the dramatic configurations of the honey itself — all serving to highlight this unique creative process further. Though the most profoundly transformative magic of Preservation resides in the book’s finished portfolio of images, it is still impossible for the viewer to avoid an empathetic moment deconstructing how it was done at every turn.

Preservation yields iconic art-historical memes and references to classicism and antiquity which were not necessarily intentional, but which were immediately apparent to the artist once it was underway. Smooth, monochrome surfaces, impossibly perfect skin, stylized, not necessarily idealized, anatomical structures, like marble or bronze or the fraught emotions still legible in the poses of the dead of Pompeii. There are more contemporary fine-art references too — Jenny Saville with her paintings of undulating fleshiness; Andres Serrano with his submersions in fluid and alabaster corpses; Francis Bacon with his evocative distortions and surreal anatomical abstractions; Bill Viola in say Ascension, or Emergence — the hyper-slow immersions in rippling water. One imagines slowed breathing, the bracing effect of the start of the pour, the moment when the body finds its place and the body’s movements freeze, while the honey just keeps coming down.

Little worked with Craig’s List actors. His ad just said “art project” and no further details were given until they arrived. He says 80% of the people stayed once they heard the plan. Over the course of 15 ten-hour days between 2012 and 2014, he saw dozens of people and thwarted a swarm of rogue robber bees. The little baby named Riot, the exuberant tattooed couple, the obese lady, the dog, the elderly, the young and innocent, the nubile and statuesque — the goal, well met, was to depict as wide a range of humanity as possible. “I wanted interesting, unique people, not just pretty people,” says Little. Plus as a practical matter he needed exaggerated features that could stand up to the honey itself, sculpturally.

Character in portraiture is conventionally revealed in the eyes and facial expression of a subject.

That in this case it was instead their bodies that took on this function was for the artist both the charm and the challenge. “I can get into people’s heads to elicit a true portrait,” says Little, “but the honey is exceptionally physical. For one thing, it requires everyone to pose with their eyes closed.” It softens the individuality of their faces but remains transparent enough to read their features, to recognize the individual. It makes each sitter more similar to the others, and yet at the same time the reactions reveal the wide range of diverse personalities one might expect — except in their bodies instead of their faces. As for the honey itself, some folks succumb to it, revel in it, luxuriate. Some remain stoic and appear relaxed. Some find the playfulness and humor in the situation, and many seem to have something to prove, perhaps to themselves. And of course, some folks just simply freak out. Each enacts the sticky-sweet, emotional, performative drama of the process in unique and telling ways — and that’s why despite its subversions, Preservation succeeds so powerfully as a body of portraiture.
–Shana Nys Dambrot

ABOUT BLAKE LITTLE
Blake Little was born and raised in Seattle before moving to Los Angeles and becoming part of the vibrant 1980’s LA Art Scene. An artist portrait series included David Hockney, John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha, and led to commercial assignments in the entertainment industry. He has since photographed for such publications as London Times Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, People Magazine, Time, Los Angeles Magazine and ESPN Magazine. Little’s first museum exhibition, “Blake Little: Photographs From The Gay Rodeo”, ran from January through July 2014 at the Eiteljorg Museum.

Preservation Book; http://preservationbook.com
Blake Little: http://blakelittle.com
Kopeikin Gallery  March 7-April 18, 2015
http://www.kopeikingallery.com/exhibitions/upcoming

 

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