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Dita Van Teese standing in front of her lover Louis Marie de Castelbajac's works for his latest solo show, on view until July 25 at the Espace M.H. Karst, 30 rue de Malte, Paris. Photo Sophie Pinchetti
purple DIARY
The official blog of Purple Fashion Magazine
tag: dita
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First show of Elizabeth Peyton in Paris, at the Gagosian Gallery
For her first solo show in France, American artist Elizabeth Peyton has created a series of small-scale tightly framed works acting as visual biography. Staying faithful to the sensuality of her intimiste genre, Peyton chronicles moments of life through her friends, artistic entourage and inspirational figures such as Berliner Klara Liden, Nate Lowman, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Pencil and oil portraits of our culture's Zeitgeist - Patti Smith, Kanye West and Justin Bieber are displayed alongside Isa Genzken with still lives based around the late French sculptor Camille Claudel. Alongside her own still life studies in Berlin and Paris, Peyton's placement of her subject evolves into the fetishisation of objects and elements as emotional connection to the person such as Camille Claudel Still Life (2010/2011), with sculpture and roses. Often using photographs as source material, the repetitive anonymity of mass-media fall short from Peyton's emotional world. Not one for the Warholian detachment, Peyton has described the act of painting a portrait as a meditative encounter. From her unique watercolour Klara (2010) to the pensive Nate (Nate Lowman 2011), an instinctual curation and insight casts her subjects into emotional pigments. Her portraits invite to the idolising contemplation of their physical aura - but beyond their distinct mystique, it's that transitory moment we continue to feel in Peyton's instinct, when the humane transcends the persona. Photo and text Sophie Pinchetti
New Works by Elizabeth Peyton, on view until July 28 at the Gagosian Gallery, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris.
GALLERY
THE GOLDEN SUN MOVEMENT PRESENTS 'ON' at the idea generation gallery, london
Children of Britain's Second Summer of Love in the late Eighties, it was the rise of Acid House that gave birth to the artistic collective known as the Golden Sun Movement. East London’s Idea Generation Gallery presents original and past artworks from English graphic designers Luke Insect, Dave Little and Leo Zero. A journey through an era of new-found hedonism, the collective’s loud psychedelia, with more than a touch of nostalgia of the late Sixties, visualised the beats and spirit that transported youth through Acid House music. Fascinated with Sixties psyche, the original UFO spirit is summoned through the group’s contemporary works fusing brash colour and higher frequency realities. Original artwork for club nights such as Paul Oakenfield’s London night Spectrum and The World by Dave Little or the Balearic Club by Leo Zero are showcased alongside Luke Insect’s vivid Kommune series. The powerful series creates a fictive portrait of a generation, a meditation on the politics of existence through community and ceremony. The Golden Sun Movement presents ‘ON’: Acid House Art and 21st Century Psychedelia, an exhibition by Luke Insect, Leo Zero and Dave Little is on view until May 14 at the Idea Generation Gallery, 11 Chance Street, London. Photo and text Sophie Pinchetti
The censored film, Fire in My Belly by David Wojnarowicz (1987)
David Wojnarowicz is a painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist and activist, who died in 1992 at the age of 37 from AIDS-related complications. He made Fire in My Belly as a poetic meditation on man, life, death, faith, and suffering in part as a response to the AIDS-related death of his close friend, artist Peter Hujar. The film was shown in December 2010 at the Washington Smithsonian Institution/Museum before being banned. Indeed, some conservative politicians judged it was an offense to Christians and exerted pressure on the Smithsonian Institution to removed his artwork.
GALLERY
Tony Cox studio visit
I have a deep, brotherly kinship with Tony’s work as if it was mine in another life. When I stare at a piece for a long time, it becomes metaphysical and meditative, paralleling every outer-body experience I’ve ever had with any drug or hallucinogenic. The only difference now is that it so acutely channels the states of consciousness…that it sobers you up in an instant. Upcoming show in the Fall - White Trash Mystic, presented by Rassa Montaser and Grear Patterson, 211 Elizabeth Street, New York, October 6th 2011. Text by Lizzi Bougatsos and Photo by Rachel Chandler