Photo ©Paris, LA

Opening Reception on April 29th, 6-10 PM

Speaking about the exhibition McNey said, “Being afraid of my sexuality made me afraid to stare. I didn’t want to be ‘caught’ looking at guys.  I think this teenage strategy of visual chastity made it all the more urgent that I find a way to legitimize staring.  Photography became for me both an apparatus and a metaphor for coming out as a gay man. Showing the work is one more step in that direction.”

Photo Josh McNey.

NEW YORK, APRIL 2011 —

Casa de Costa is pleased to announce Protect from Light, a solo photography exhibition by artist Josh McNey.  The show at Casa de Costa marks the debut of the firm’s new salon and studio at 11 Stone Street in historic Lower Manhattan.

Protect from Light features nearly thirty unpublished photographs, including landscapes, still life and portraits primarily from McNey’s work with college wrestlers, professional bull riders and other athletes. Showcasing just some selections from a decade-long practice, Protect from Light provides the first opportunity to see a substantial collection of finished work by the artist. McNey’s landscape and still life work comprises almost half of this exhibition and reminds viewers of the serene beauty of the everyday. The images also evoke questions about the relationship between nature and engineering, the gendering of dominance and submission, and the transience of our daily lives.
Josh McNey grew up in a suburban enclave of Los Angeles, where he developed an early interest in photography; his subjects included his three brothers, the Southern California landscape and small still life arrangements.  At the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the US Marines and served in an elite Force Reconnaissance unit for more than seven years.  During that time he expanded his practice, shooting editorial portraits and increasingly, men. His personal portrait work has evolved into a hybrid of diary and staging, creating what writer Alistair McCartney described as, “the ideal universe inhabited by the ideal boy.” McNey’s male subjects evoke an unmistakable sense of strength and classical beauty tempered by vulnerability.

Josh McNey has lived in various places in the US and now resides in New York City. His portrait work has appeared in Tokion, Out, XLR8R, K48, Paris/LA and other select magazines and has been exhibited in group shows in the US and Europe.

Josh McNey – Protect from Light
April 29 – June 9
Opening Reception on April 29th, 6-10 PM at 11 Stone Street, 6th Floor

Photo Josh McNey.

VIEW ON THE MOUNT FUJI FROM FROM THE 25TH FLOOR OF TOKYU STAY HOTEL.

VIEW ON THE PRADA STORE FROM THE 25TH FLOOR OF TOKYU STAY HOTEL.

PALM TREES.

MORE PALM TREES.

AIRSHIP IN A CLEAR BLUE SKY

QUIET STREET BEHIND BUSY SHIBUYA.

GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON’S AWESOME BIKE

KEIICHI NITTA‘S CAR CUSTOMIZED BY MARK GONZALES.

OSCAR TUAZON AND GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON SHOW AT THE RAT HOLE GALLERY.

NIGHTFALL.

RED LANTERNS.

Photography by dp for ©PARIS, LA taken in Tokyo last December 2010.

(except the O. Tuazon & G E Einarsson show’ picture taken by the Rat Hole Gallery)

Entering a new year, our friend and contributor Martin Krutski, who is currently based in India, shares a photographic portrait of the Capitol Complex located in Chandigarh, the dream city of India’s first Prime Minister, Sh. Jawahar Lal Nehru.

“Chandigarh was planned by the famous French architect Le Corbusier. Picturesquely located at the foothills of Shivaliks, it is known as one of the best experiments in urban planning and modern architecture in the twentieth century in India.

Chandigarh derives its name from the temple of “Chandi Mandir” located in the vicinity of the site selected for the city. The deity ‘Chandi’, the goddess of power and a fort of ‘garh’ laying beyond the temple gave the city its name “Chandigarh-The City Beautiful”.

Le Corbusier conceived the master plan of Chandigarh as analogous to human body, with a clearly defined head (the Capitol Complex, Sector 1), heart (the City Centre Sector-17), lungs ( the leisure valley, innumerable open spaces and sector greens), the intellect (the cultural and educational institutions), the circulatory system (the network of roads, the 7Vs) and the viscera (the Industrial Area). The concept of the city is based on four major functions: living, working, care of the body and spirit and circulation.

The Capital complex comprises three architectural masterpieces: the “Secretariat”, the “High Court” and the “Legislative Assembly”, separated by large piazzas. In the heart of the Capital Complex stands the giant metallic sculpture of The Open Hand, the official emblem of Chandigarh, signifying the city’s credo of “open to give, open to receive”. ” (via the official website of the Chandigarh Administration)

Photography Martin Krutzki for ©PARIS, LA

HEDI SLIMANE
I LOVE USA
LOS ANGELES JUNE 2010
COMMISSIONED BY THECORNER.COM

SIDNEY IS A 15 YO CALIFORNIA GIRL FROM VENICE BEACH. HEDI S. FOUND HER AT COACHELLA FESTIVAL IN 2009. WOLF IS A 15 YO CALIFORNIA BOY FROM LAUREL CANYON. HEDI S FOUND HIM AT COACHELLA FESTIVAL IN 2010. SIDNEY AND WOLF HAD NEVER MET, BUT HAD HEARD OF EACH OTHER. THEY MET ON THE BEACH ON CAMERA WITH HEDI S, FILMING THEIR ENCOUNTER. SIDNEY AND WOLF ARE BOTH SHY AND HARDLY SPOKE TO EACH OTHER. THEY WALKED TOGETHER ON THE BEACH. SIDNEY WAS HOLDING HER POMS POMS, WOLF WAS PLAYING HIS CELLO. THIS IS BEGINNING OF I LOVE U.S.A PROJECT.

IN THE TITLE, I LOVE U.S.A, U.S.A IS ACTUALLY THE NICKNAME HEDI HAD GIVEN TO SIDNEY (U.SIDNEY.A). SHE APPEARS OFTEN ON HEDI S. PHOTOGRAPHIC DIARY, AS THE REPRESENTATION OF CALIFORNIA, HEDI S.’S IDEA OF CALIFORNIA, AND IDEAL CALIFORNIA GIRL. HEDI S. WANTED SIDNEY TO EXPERIMENT WITH HER OWN IDEA OF CHEERLEADING, A TRADITION IN AMERICAN’S YOUTH CULTURE. SIDNEY IMPROVISES IN THIS PIECE, ALONG WOLF, WHO, HIMSELF IMPROVISE ON HIS CIELLO. WOLF WEARS A WOLF HALLOWEEN MASK, AS A TEEN INDIE TRANSPOSITION OF PETER AND THE WOLF, THE PROKOVIEV PIECE, AND THE PETIT CHAPERON ROUGE.

I LOVE U.S.A IS ABOUT A CERTAIN IDEA OF CALIFORNIAN YOUTH AND CULTURE. THIS FILM PROJECT IS RELATED TO HEDI’S BOOK TO COME. IT IS ALSO THE TITLE OF HEDI SLIMANE’ S EXHIBITION OF FEBRUARY 2011 AT GALERIE ALMINE RECH.

I LOVE U.S.A IS STRUCTURED LIKE MOST OF HEDI’S WORK, FOR THE PAST DECADE, AND BASED ON AN ARYTHMIC SYNCHRONISATION.

KARL LAGERFELD, PARCOURS DE TRAVAIL

AT MAISON EUROPÉENNE DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE

EXHIBITION FROM SEPT 15 TO OCT 31, 2010

CASA MALAPARTE

TADAO ANDO – VITRA HOUSE

NEW YORK FACADES

DESIGNED BY MEN AND NATURE

ANOTHER SIDE OF VERSAILLES

GALLERY OF PORTRAITS

FOCUS ON TWO AMERICAN FIGURES (David Lynch and Jack Nicholson)

FOCUS ON A TRUE PARISIAN (Jane Birkin)

FOCUS ON TWO FRENCH FIGURES (Vincent Cassel and Fanny Ardant)

Photography ©PARIS, LA

photography ©PARIS, LA.

CATHERINE OPIE AT REGEN PROJECTS

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 24, 6:00 – 8:00 pm

The exhibition will present a suite of new photographs that further the artist’s investigation into ideas of landscape. With the ocean as her backdrop, Opie explores the shifting mise en scène of light, color, movement, and the tension between boundaries and limitlessness.

Catherine Opie, Sunset #8, 2009.

In the summer of 2009, Opie traveled aboard a container ship en route from Korea to Long Beach. She documented the voyage in a series of time-based photographs that captured each sunrise and sunset for the ten-day duration of the trip. The works are composed with equal registers of water and sky, broken by a thin center horizon line. This is a format Opie  also used in her iconic Icehouses (2001) and Surfers (2003) series. These segmented panoramic landscapes capture the point where sky and water meet. Articulated in the title of the exhibition, the twelve-mile distance between the artist and horizon evokes notions of time, place, solitude, elusiveness, and possibility. The deliberate framing of each work places the viewer in a precise physical reference point and moment in time. Evoking a formal classicism, these beautifully elegant and masterful compositions immerse and seduce the eye. There are subtleties that reveal in the nuances of the photographs – whisper of color, shimmer of waves, and glimpse of light. These painterly, poetic, and lyrical visions of blue, grey, black, orange, and yellow resonate with oblivion, the sublime, and the unknown.

Catherine Opie’s complex and diverse body of work is political, personal, and highly aesthetic – the formal, conceptual, and documentary are always at play. Her work consistently engages in formal issues and maintains a formal rigor and technical mastery that underscores highly aestheticized oeuvre. Visual pleasure can always be found in her arresting and seductive photographs.

“All of Opie’s work is characterized by a stillness and quietude; even the black-and-white photographs of urban views never depict the hustle and bustle of city life but rather create a preternaturally calm, symmetrical image. The 1999 landscapes, as well as the subsequent Icehouses and Surfers series, call to mind Romantic paintings such as Caspar David Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea (1809), in which a lone figure stands before the sublime vastness of an open ocean. In a discussion of Romantic aesthetics, literary critic Susan Stewart noted that philosophers ‘consider the phenomenon of the horizon, particularly the horizon as a kind of temporal hinge between immediate apprehension and a constant postponement of closure. . . . The very fact of the horizon is what is immutable; it is an infinite dividing line between infinite entities, a place toward which the mind journeys and yet a place that appears as a continuous, productive deferral of place.’”

(Jennifer Blessing. “Catherine Opie: American Photographer” in Catherine Opie: American Photographer, published by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008, p. 23)

Exhibition running from April 24 to May 22, 2010
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Catherine Opie’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. In 2008 she had a mid-career survey at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Additionally she has had solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis; Photographers’ Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. An exhibition of Opie’s football, surfer, and landscape photographs will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in July 2010.

Photography by Camille Vivier.

Rose Red (Prod by Jahlil Beats) off “Gangsta Grillz: Flamerz 3

- The Wait Is Over” by Meek Mill and DJ Drama [Mixtape, 2010]