This new body of work is comprised of twelve images of exotic dancers. Each large-scale image captures a dancer mid-pose wrapped around a dancing pole. The works are shot in various locations and in each case the dancers are not performing for an audience but rather just for the artist himself, making the setting strangely empty.
Solo show
Gagosian Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by Philip-Lorca diCorcia.
This new body of work is comprised of twelve images of exotic dancers. Each large-scale image captures a dancer mid-pose wrapped around a dancing pole. The works are shot in various locations and in each case the dancers are not performing for an audience but rather just for the artist himself, making the setting strangely empty. Suspended in the air and starkly lit, each woman’s body takes on the character of a statue.
One of America’s leading photographers, diCorcia combines a documentary tradition with the fictional worlds of cinema and advertising to create a powerful link between reality, fantasy and desire. This new body of work brilliantly incorporates elements formed in diCorcia’s earlier series of works. Here we see the stark lighting, which he employed in "Streetworks" and "Heads," using flash and trip lights to give documentary photographs the feeling of an opera set. In these new works, like with his previous series of "Hollywood Hustlers," he concentrates on subjects whose personas are already theatrically enlarged by their lives. In all cases diCorcia manipulates his subjects to his own ends. As he has said:
“Psychology is a reality for many people. I try to show this. It may not, in fact, be the actual psychology of the subject that I portray, but it is played out in the image and the projection of that psychology into the surrounding space… Their image is the outward facing front belied by the inwardly gazing eyes.â€
This series of work, recently exhibited at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, follows on from his highly acclaimed exhibition "A Storybook Life" shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, 2003. Philip-Lorca diCorcia has also exhibited extensively in the United States including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Whitney Biennial, New York.
Image: Heema, 2004 - Fuji Crystal Archive print mounted on Dibond
Gagosian Gallery - 8 HEDDON STREET - LONDON W1B 4BU