Charlie White – SELF PORTRAIT
15. März - 26. April 2014
Loock Galerie is proud to premiere SELF PORTRAIT, the new body of work by Charlie White.
In Self Portrait White continues his investigation of portraiture in a series of figure studies that collapse the classical nude and the contemporary naked self-shot, and he also introduces his first series of still-life photographs: cornucopia-like compositions which operate as corollary to the naked figures. Self Portrait addresses the dominance of the "self" in popular photographic forms, relating these shared vanities to the temporal operations of sexualized self-shots trafficked across platforms such as Craigslist, Backpage, and, 4chan. Naked figures employing the lens as a communication tool and solicitation device are paired with grabbing hands pilfering tabletops of Flemish-inspired abundance, offering a reassessment of the images of self-commodification and survival in our current moment.
Within these new works, White continues his use of gridded spaces and planes based on the bottommost layer found "under" the image in digital software–a structure itself derived from the Cartesian system used in Renaissance painting. White's gridded planes–which have functioned as a sort of measuring tool for his subjects–here become a dimensional space, mapping the x-y coordinates of his subjects and still lifes. This "nowhere space," without skin or surface, provides a blank plane for analysis and critique.
Charlie White (b.1972) has exhibited his photographs, films, animations, and personal archives internationally since1999. White’s most recent monograph, American Minor, was published by JRP | Ringier in 2009; his work was included in the Singapore Biennial in 2011 and in The Sun and Other Stars, a major two-person exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum in 2012; his experimental teen pop album Music for Sleeping Children [http://musicforsleepingchildren.com] was released in 2013; and his journal The Enemy [http://theenemyreader.org] launched at the start of this year. Charlie White lives and works in Los Angeles, California, where he is Associate Professor at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California.