London-based artist Danny Treacy (b. 1975) searches his surroundings for discarded clothing to create suggestive, haunting costumes. Treacy then dresses himself in what he fabricates and, by making striking life-sized self-portraits, he becomes ‘Them’.
The ‘suits’ he constructs are born out of the discovery of what’s been left behind by others, and ultimately they allow Treacy to become something uncertain: evocative figures which seemingly transgress race, gender, and even reality. Danny Treacy explains, “Somewhere in the process of collecting the clothing, of de- construction, re-creating, stitching, wearing and standing in the clothing, each stage done by myself, I feel that in the final image I disappear, not revealing anything of myself, the antithesis of self-portraiture.” Antoine Rose shoots his Up in the Air project from helicopters, offering spectacular panoramas captured from a bird’s eye view. The exclusive bird’s eye view imposes only two fields to his compositions: the ocean and the beach, excluding the sky. Sometimes the image is even entirely occupied by the beach alone making it more graphic and abstract.
There is always a contrast between these two registers, horizontally or vertically arranged: the irregular field of the calm or whirling ocean, in a blue-green turquoise color, on the one hand, and the regular register of the beach, where tanned people and artifacts – parasols, beach sheets and towels, or sun beds – add a variety of natural and respectively industrial colors, on the other hand. Because of the aerial distance, these elements appear as small, yet very detailed, geometric patterns or puzzle pieces dispersed on the yellowish white sand of the sun-soaked beach surface or like a polka dot design on an immense fabric.
These miniature-like representations transform the natural aerial landscapes into abstract paintings and inscribe Rose’s works in a minimalist artistic approach.
FESTIVAL
Paris Photo Los Angeles
May 1st – 3rd, 2015
Samuel Maenhoudt Gallery
Paramount Pictures Studios
Los Angeles
780 N. Gower Street
Los Angeles, CA 90038
United States
