The Galerie Robinson in Paris presents a group exhibition featuring the work of Hamid Blad, Damien Guillaume and Yann Amstutz. Corps hommes parcelles offers three ways of seeing the male body.
Last year’s exhibition Masculin/Masculin at the Musée d’Orsay took visitors on an unprecedented journey through the history of art depicting the male body. It was a rich but somewhat classical—some might say tame—effort. The male body is central to the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose retrospective at the Grand Palais has been incredibly popular. Coincidence?
It’s clear that the institutionalization resulting from these major exhibitions tones down the reception of the work by the artists on display. Their controversial aspects from the animal to the erotic, not to mention the pornographic, are often erased, nowhere to be seen on the images of male bodies that appear on promotional materials or in the press. It’s as if the female body could be endlessly manipulated, unlike the male body, which remains the subject of classical representation, even when it’s nude.
Corps hommes parcelles offers a contemporary and uninhibited reflection on the male body by three male photographers.
In his new series, Corps anonymes, Hamid Blad has chosen to use a slow process to conceptually and sensually capture a rather taboo subject. The men he’s photographed are mostly male escorts offering their services online, which is how he met them. Blad used the wet collodion process and printed the work on metal plates. In this sensitive, poetic work, Blad gives shape to the male body. He invited two other photographers to enrich and enter into dialogue with his own vision and work. Damien Guillaume and Yann Amstutz agreed to the project with Mythes décisifs and Joysticks, respectively.
EXHIBITION
Corps hommes parcelles
Photographs by Hamid Blad, Damien Guillaume & Yann Amstutz
Du 15 mai au 15 juin 2014
Galerie Robinson
10 rue de Picardie
75003 Paris
France
+33 (0)6 63 77 93 68
