Tel Aviv Museum of Art Exhibits Provocative Photographer David LaChapelle

Written by Nili Goren Monday, 19 July 2010 20:59

TEL AVIV.- A selection from the works of provocative photographer David LaChapelle (b. Connecticut, 1963) is exhibited in Israel for the first time, giving a comprehensive view of his unique and daring style of the past twenty years. Alongside familiar subversive photographs originally commissioned for fashion and celebrity editorials, the show explores LaChapelle's personal projects, created recently as part of his artistic and critical expression. Here he seeks to juxtapose contrasting concepts through their visual representation: hope and despair, growth and devastation, renewal and degeneration. On view at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, opening 22 July.

He creates uncommon combinations, surprisingly mixing familiar symbols with anonymous models, creating oxymoronic pictures of the beauty of destruction and the glamour of disaster. The photographs are often laden with symbols and metaphors—from devout Christian iconography through the blunt pornography of overdoses and street gangs. He photographed singer Madonna with an angelic halo, and Courtney Love as a Pietà with a naked man slumped in her arms, a combination of Jesus and her late husband Curt Cobain. LaChapelle takes the photographed image to the extreme of a blunt cliché, which almost collapses into a perfect grotesque due to the redundant color and exaggerated processing; surprisingly, beyond the excess, human gestures and unexpected vulnerability are revealed.

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