Looking Forward: ART IN 2012

Terry Richardson, Untitled (red lips), 2011

As everyone looks backward – best album, film, book, art exhibition of 2011 – Pas Un Autre looks forward to a few important and exciting exhibitions held around the world in 2012. As you'll see – there will be a trend in Japanese contemporary visual art and Japanese artist's getting their due in major museums, Damien Hirst attempts to take over the world with spots, British artist Gillian Wearing taps into the human psyche, and Terry Richardson has his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. 

1.  The first exhibition of renowned Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama's work at a Los Angeles museum. Fracture: Daido Moriyama, which is on view from April 7 to July 31 2012 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,  highlights the raw power of Moriyama’s work through a selection of photographic prints and books spanning four decades, as well as an installation of more recent color prints.

2. In 2012 British artist Damien Hirst will take over the world with his famous "spot paintings."  From January 12 to February 18 at all ten Gagosian Gallery locations around the world, from Madison Avenue to Hong Kong to Geneva, will be presenting the exhibition Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011.

3.  Japanese artist Yayoi Kusuma, famous too for her repeating dot patterns, but also for her painting, drawing, sculpture, film, performance and immersive installations, will be having a major retrospective at the Tate Modern in London. Kusuma, who grew up in rural Japan and became the center of the New York avante-garde art scene in New York in 60s and has spent the last few decades in a psychiatric institution in Tokyo, will be having a series of major retrospectives in the coming year.  Kusuma's retrospective at the Tate Modern will be on view from February 9 to July 5 2012.

4. Turner Prize-winning British artist Gillian Wearing’s photographs and films explore the public and private lives of ordinary people. Fascinated by how people present themselves in front of the camera in fly-on-the-wall documentaries and reality TV, she explores ideas of personal identity through often masking her subjects and using theatre’s staging techniques.From March 28 to June 17 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London presents a major exhibition that surveys Wearing’s work.

5. Terry Richardson’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, titled Terrywood, presents over 25 of his latest photographs. Inspired by the multiple facets of Hollywood life, Terrywood unveils a series of images of the famous locale, as seen through Richardson’s eyes. Terryworld meets Hollywood, as the local characters, familiar landscapes, and architectural details, now verge on having a new identity. With images such as Untitled (Hollywood), and Untitled (Nude), both photographs of the proverbial chintzy signs that are ubiquitous throughout Hollywood, Richardson illustrates his proclivity for branding whatever subject matter he approaches. Terrywood will be on view at the OH WOW gallery on La Cienaga in Los Angeles from February 24  to March 31, 2012.

Model as Muse: The Kate Moss Portfolio

GLuchford_shot-54-original-kate-moss_boxing

Glen Luchford, Kate Moss, 1994

Ephemeral, unique, stunning, imperfect, a blank canvas. These are all words that have been used to describe Kate Moss, the original “waif” who helped effect a watershed change in fashion in the early 90’s and continues to inspire a slew of diverse, evocative visions from some of the most highly-acclaimed photographers in the world. Moss’s is arguably one of the most controversial, intriguing, mesmerizing and instantly recognizable faces of our era. Simultaneously plain and gorgeous, Moss is exalted by photographers for the striking presence and personality she brings to the photographic medium, as well as her unmatched ability to morph into anything—femme fatale, elegant society woman, innocent child, tomboy, seductress, goddess.

Bruce Weber, Kate Moss, 1997

Model as Muse: The Kate Moss Portfolio opened this past Thursday, May 13th at Danziger Projects’ new location in Chelsea. The intimate, two-room gallery displays the work of 11 of the world’s leading fashion photographers, including Annie Leibovitz, Glen Luchford, Terry Richardson, Mario Sorrenti, Mario Testino, Juergen Teller, Bruce Weber, Inez Van Lamsweerde, Vinoodh Matadin and Herb Ritts, each of whom captured the unusual, captivating British icon at different points throughout her illustrious career. The portfolio includes never-before-seen shots of Moss at the beginning of her career in 1988, Chuck Close’s faceless nude daguerrotype diptych, one of notorious team Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott’s famed glamour shots from the 2008 issue of Interview magazine showcasing its new layout, several photographs of Moss at the age of eighteen on her first trip to New York, and countless other breathtaking works.

“I think that Kate Moss is not so much a model or a supermodel, but an artist-model. There is a quality that she has that inspires photographers to do their best and create something that is both the epitome of their style and also takes them as far into [the place] where art meets fashion and where fashion meets art,” said James Danziger, owner of the gallery and curator of the exhibit.

Model as Muse:The Kate Moss Portfolio is now on display at Danziger Projects, 527 West 23rd St, New York. www.danzigerprojects.com

Text by Annabel Graham for Pas Un Autre

(Annabel Graham is a photographer and writer based in NYC, she has worked for Interview Magazine as well as the Paris Review, and she is a regular contributor to Pas Un Autre, visit her blog Can I Borrow Your Fire)

Glen Lemuel, Kate Moss, 1988