PHOTO:Robert Mapplethorpe-XYZ
Robert Mapplethorpe lived a life of passion in the New York underground and rock scenes in the ‘70s and ‘80s. That passion also made its way into his art. In an interview given in 1987, just two years before his death, Mapplethorpe explained that photography in the ‘70s was the perfect medium for a fast-paced time. He did not really choose photography, photography chose him. In many ways, Mapplethorpe was a sculptor at heart, a plastic artist driven by the question of the body and its sexuality and obsessed by the search for perfect form.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac Archive
The exhibition “XYZ” is part of a series in which Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac invites guest curators to rediscover this major photographer and to apply their subjective perspective to transpose Mapplethorpe‘s work into a completely new context. This year the Gallery has invited architect and designer Peter Marino to curate its next exhibition dedicated to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Preceding curators include: Isabelle Huppert, Cindy Sherman, David Hockney, Hedi Slimane, Bob Wilson, Sofia Coppola and Isabelle Huppert. The Gallery invited the architect and designer Peter Marino to curate the exhibition. For the exhibition Peter Marino revisits the themes he believes fundamental, Mapplethorpe’s XYZ portfolio (X for sex, Y for floral still lifes, and Z for male nudes), selecting from the archives of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Conceiving a dense yet precise curation, he chose 17 Polaroid’s and 60 photographs, some of which are part of the permanent collections of The Guggenheim Museum, LACMA and The Getty Museum. Furthering the investigation on traditional perceptions of Mapplethorpe’s work, Peter Marino takes on the same challenge as the artist, bringing every form, every attitude, every concept to its most complete realization. The installation conceived by Peter Marino incites visual correspondences, highlighting the architectural bodies and forms, exploring the sexual aesthetics without inhibition.
Info: Curator: Peter Marino, Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 7 rue Debelleyme, Paris, Duration: 28/1-5/3/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, http://ropac.net
