RICHARD KERN
16 January 2010 – 20 February 2010
RONCHINI CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY
Opening: Saturday 16 January 2010, 5:30 pm
The artist will attend
Clicca sulle icone per vedere le fotografie
Ronchini Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of the American artist, photographer and film maker Richard Kern.
The exhibition presents 11 new shots, all taken over the past year. The main subject of the artist’s photographs are young women. The protagonists of these portraits are somehow watched in their privacy by our eyes, while they are undressing or showing their affection. Kern’s photographs depict faces and sensuous bodies of models caught in their daily and intimate positions, openly disclosing their freedom and their inclinations in a provocative manner.
…“At some point, the eye is not content with capturing the manifest reality any longer but needs to enter into another private sphere, the key-hole one, stolen, forbidden”, states Luca Beatrice in his introduction to the catalogue. In actual fact Kern has always “ironically” defined himself as a small-towner with voyeuristic tendencies. He is considered as a “master” of photography and of the underground culture, voicing a New York that manifests itself through its most provocative and cynical aspects.”…Kern works together with non professional young women and chooses daily sceneries, made more sober and elegant by the linguistic sophistication, the framing, the care he puts in the expression of their faces. And here is the key point of Kern’s poetics: the viewer’s voyeurism always corresponds with the exhibitionism of what is portrayed.
Richard Kern was born in 1954 in Roanoke Rapids in North Carolina. He has lived and worked in New York City since 1979, when he started to take photographs of drug peddler, penniless artists and friends who used to frequent his studio. He shot some quite risqué and insulting short movies that were unexpectedly shown round the world and brought him fame. In the 80s Kern directed some underground films (the most known is Fingered, played by Lydia Lunch). Since the 90s he has totally dedicated himself to photography, occasionally directing some video clips for bands such as Marilyn Manson and the Sonic Youth. Among the several publications dedicated to his work, let’s mention XX Girls (Fiction Inc. Tokyo, 1996), N.Y. Girls (Taschen, 1997), Model Release (Taschen, 2000), Soft (Universe, 2005), Action (Taschen, 2007) and Looker (Abrams 2008). The Italian publications include Richard Kern (Charta Edizioni, Milan, 1998) and Digital (Charta, 2007). Among the countless shows held all over the world let’s mention the anthological exhibitions at the I.C.A. (Institute of Contemporary Art) in London in 2002 and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2004.
For further information please visit: www.richardkern.com
Ronchini Contemporary Art Gallery timetable:
Mondays-Saturdays 9-1:00 and 4-8:00 pm. Sunday mornings by appointment
Ronchini Arte Contemporanea – P.zza Duomo 3 – 05100 TERNI – Tel 0744.58816 www.ronchiniarte.com - info@ronchiniarte.com
