Juergen Teller, the legendary German photographer who joined fashion and art in his work on a genius way, will release on the 31St of Mai 2010 his latest photography book called: “Zimmerman”. This book will feature his new photo series which documents his muse the supermodel Raquel Zimmermann engaging in family events and interacting with Teller’s native environment in Bubenreuth, Southern Germany. Holding true to his signature snapshot aesthetic while nonetheless managing to construct what he describes as a “surreal fairy tale”, a narrative akin in style to the Gothic and dramatic Brothers Grimm fairy tales.
Teller captures Zimmermann in a state of seeming abandon, in the woods or lying semi-nude on the family table during a meal. It are suggestive images, elegantly dressed up with a touch of eroticism, and which tell a fashion tale which is going beyond conventional glamour.

Photos: Juergen Teller | Zimmermann (Steidl)

The NRW Forum in Düsseldorf has organised a major retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs. Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) dominated photography in the late twentieth century and paved the way for the recognition of photography as an art form in its own right. Both during his life and since his death, Mapplethorpe’s work has been the subject of much controversial debate.His radical portrayals of nudity and sexual acts were always controversial; some of his photos caused a stir and frequently resulted in protests outside exhibitions. Above all, Robert Mapplethorpe developed his own photographic style that paid homage to the ideals of perfection and form.

 ‘I look for the perfection of form. I do this in portraits, in photographs of penises, in photographs of flowers.’

 The fact that the photographs are displayed on snow-white walls underpins this view of his work and consciously moves away from the coy Boudoir-style presentation of his photographs on lilac and purple walls a dominant feature of exhibitions of Mapplethorpe’s work for many years and opens up the work to a more concept-based, minimalist view of things.

The exhibition in the NRW Forum covers all areas of Mapplethorpe’s work, from portraits and self-portraits, homosexuality, nudes, flowers and the quintessence of his oeuvre the photographic images of sculptures, including early Polaroids. It will run until 15 August 2010.

Trailer of the film Robert Mapplethorpe “Shapes”  by Ralph Goertz | IKS-Medienarchiv

Top photo: Robert Mapplethorpe at his Whitney Retrospective 1988 by Jonathan Becker, Vanity Fair

Photos by Robert Mapplethorpe | Top Photo by Jonathan Becker, Vanity Fair | Video by Ralph Goertz

Jeff Koons was born in York, PA in 1955. He obtained a B.F.A at The Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, and also studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. Since his emergence in the 1980s Jeff Koons has blended the concerns and methods of Pop, Conceptual, and appropriation art with craft-making and popular culture to create his own unique iconography, often controversial and always engaging. His work explores contemporary obsessions with sex and desire; race and gender; and celebrity, media, commerce, and fame. A self-proclaimed “idea man,” Koons hires artisans and technicians to make the actual works. For him, the hand of the artist is not the important issue: “Art is really just communication of something and the more archetypal it is, the more communicative it is.”

New paintings by Jeff Koons will be shown in the Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, U.s.a. The vernissage of this exhibition will be on November the 14th 2009 and the exhibition will run until January 9 ,2010.

Koons’ new paintings are ambitious in their breadth. They engage in a dialogue with cultural history that is at once visual, intellectual, biological, and philosophical, as well as with art history, from the Venus of Willendorf to Gustave Courbet and Salvador Dali. At first glance the works may seem abstract and gestural, but at the same time they are embedded in the traditions of figurative painting. The brush strokes, which are photo realistic in their application, are actually fake brush strokes in the style of Roy Lichtenstein but at the same time they support the totality of gesture and action in life itself. The visual quality of Cy Twombly’swork is a reference as is its embodiment of the existential issues of what it means to be an artist. The depth in these paintings is figurative depth; the painted dots create holograms, giving an illusion of depth of field that is similar to that which exists between the viewer’s plane and the figure in Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde. The dot overlay represents past technologies, like color television, to remind the viewer of change and mortality. Through his ongoing exploration of cultural history and sexuality, Koons draws attention to time past, present, and future.

Photos Jeff Koons | Gagosian Gallery

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film maker who is known for her conceptual self portraits. Her works can rely on shock, surprise but also beauty. Depending on what era her works have focused on. As a female artist, Sherman addressed the issue of physical gender expectations and identity formation.

Sherman’s earlier work has toyed with and skewered feminine mystique.  In her seminal Untitled Film Stills and other conceptual female portraits, she cast herself in most pictures, adopting various roles in the photographs that both exploit and comment on the male gaze, as well as create a running narrative about female identity.

Her latest works seem to be representative of Sherman looking forward in time. Sherman seems to be focusing on a period of transition and uncertainty in the lives of Western womanhood.  The time of sexual attraction and procreation is seemingly over for these women. These society women are approaching a time when their previously engaged and active lives begin to slow down.  The slight satirical appearances of the women hint at a vulnerability and a despair in the not too distant future, despite the many attempts at proud stances by these women.  Rather than these pictures being a reflection of how men view women, these are strictly Sherman’s eyes we are seeing through this time.

The second remarkable fact about this latest series is that they are basically larger then life. Not only the physical photo dimensions  are over-sized but also the make up Sherman uses to assume each specific identity and role for the photographs has been purposefully over done, the clothing worn in each photo helps tell a story, and the poses range from icy cold to slightly demented. There’s women in ball gowns alone in their own living rooms.  Women who are trying very hard to look good for the camera.

Photos: Cindy Sherman | Conceptual portaits