In 2005, the highest paid commercial photographer in the world retired, bought a farm on Hawaii and decided to focus on his artistic work.
LAND SCAPE / Refineries and Gas Stations in the result of this retreat. The photographer presents the viewer with futuristic temples torn between evolution and destruction, seduction and menace, like “architectural avatars” build from pasteboard, LED and recycled objects—hair curlers, egg cartons, tin cans, electronic waste—in order to illustrate and condemn our universal dependence on oil, and the “precipice” it represents for our civilization.
LaChapelle worked on the project for three years, in Maui, where he photographed gas stations in the middle of the jungle, and in his studio in Los Angeles and its surroundings, where he shot refineries, which he then imaginatively recomposed following a long observation of refineries on the West Coast and in the American desert.
EXHIBITION
David LaChapelle, LAND SCAPE
January 17 – March 1, 2014
Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 Tenth Avenue
New York
USA
http://www.davidlachapelle.com
http://www.paulkasmingallery.com
