Considered one of the most emblematic photographers of his generation, Juergen Teller is one of the few artists to have won recognition in the worlds both of art and fashion. For his first solo show at Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, the photographer is presenting three new series.
Woo (2013) was made after the exhibition of the same name at the ICA, London, in 2013. Debunking the status of both art and fashion photography, the works were all placed on the same level, assembled to form wallpaper covering one room of the art centre. This combination of images was like a pinboard of family pics, a tangled retrospective of his work as fashion photographer and artist.
Another series, Masculin (2013), has never been shown before. It was made after Teller visited the exhibition Masculin/Masculin at the Musée d’Orsay (2013), which featured one of his self-portraits. The images answer each other, with each photo from the Orsay exhibition being echoed by a Teller self-portrait. The latter show the artist in a gym, dressed in shorts and trainers and doing exercise, hefting barbells and sweating profusely in poses that evoke nudes in classical painting and sculpture, humorously and self-mockingly recalling all the effort – and grotesqueness – that lies behind attainment of those ideal muscular bodies.
The last series of photographs, Irene im Wald (2012), is undoubtedly the most intimate and personal of the three. These small-format photos follow Irene, Juergen’s mother, on a walk through the forest of Erlangen, a place familiar to him since childhood. Evoking the balmy mood of an afternoon with the family, each image expresses the photographer’s tender vision of his mother, seen in the forest on a sunny winter’s day.
EXHIBITION
I am Fifty
Juergen Teller
March 21 – May 25, 2014
Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve
7 rue Pastourelle
75003 Paris
