JAN RATTIA – TEASE

Jan Rattia spent nearly two years traveling the Unites States—from Washington DC to Atlanta, Miami to Phoenix, and back to New York City—in order to photograph members of a singular and largely misunderstood fraternity: male strippers. Rattia’s images, however, go beyond what most people typically know of men in the profession. While sometimes shooting the dancers onstage as they present themselves to their audience, Rattia more often preferred to capture portraits backstage or at home, in order to create a more fully rounded picture of these men and their lives.

Rattia muses: “Backstage, preparing for their performances, the dancers primp and pump and shave to look their best and meet the expectations of their lucrative patrons.” However, he points out: “Each of the strippers has a story, in many cases mundane and generally unexpected. Most are straight, even though they clearly welcome the attention of other males. They may be students, businessmen, investors, and even doctors, or nothing more than what they appear.”

Opposite – Smoke and Mirrors

Exhibition runs through to May 21st, 2016

ClampArt
521- 531 West 25th Street
New York
NY
10001

clampart.com

JULIA HETTA – OUT OF CONTEXT

Julia Hetta is a photographer of the digital age but unlike many of her peers that have a new-found interest in shooting on film today, she has a long and passionate history with the old craft of picture making, exposed to photography since childhood through her father who had a darkroom in their basement in Uppsala. The three years she spent studying photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy in Amsterdam involved infinite hours of solitary dedication in the darkroom. It was a period she remembers as lonely and peculiar, finding solace in the Rijksmuseum where the faces portrayed in the master paintings became real, like flesh and blood in front of her peering eyes.

Indeed, when looking at Hetta’s pictures, ones mind travels back to early Netherlandish painting, particularly to those of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden whose innovative use of oil enhanced the emotional realism in portraiture by new descriptive techniques. The sense of meditation and inner life seen in these 15th century paintings can also be seen in Julia’s photo graphs. Like her predecessors she is intensely interested in the effects of daylight; her timeless figures emerging gracefully from unadorned settings of simple, often obscured backgrounds. The sophisticated combinations of the objects and rich textures of her still-life are skillfully described and there is aquiet, graceful reflectiveness to her motifs.

Exhibition runs through till May 21st, 2016

Exhibition space Stockholm
Sibyllegatan 26
11442 Stockholm
Sweden

www.grundemarknilsson.se

PETER HUTTON – FILM STILLS

In the artist’s words: “Film is like amber. It’s organic, made from animal bones, and a bit like human skin. As we age it wrinkles and shrinks. Our bodies are maps of our lives and visual evidence of lives lived. Like amber, the traditional material of film –celluloid –is a record of time. Linear and relentless, it captures our dreams and continues to live as a record of our evolving visual culture. Electronic media has devoured film and transformed time into a complex prism of non-linear wonder.”

Filmmaker Peter Hutton presents a selection of photographs that are digital blow-ups of 16 millimeter film frames from a selection of images made over the past 40 years. Digital printing has enabled Hutton to freeze time and provide the viewer with a sustained moment of reflection. Through these images, one can contemplate a new iteration of cinematic time. They offer a visual archeology of the landscapes and cityscapes of the world.

Exhibition runs through to April 30th, 2016

Shoshana Wayne Gallery
Bergamot Station·2525 Michigan Ave
B1·Santa Monica
CA 90404

shoshanawayne.com