The exhibition, entitled L’Abbraccio, which translates as “Embrace” or “Hug”, has been conceived along thematic lines. In this sense, it tells us something different from his other recent exhibitions. His Six Tables on Water at David Gill Galleries in London least year and a jewellery exhibition at Galerie Basia Embiricos in Paris, which finished in February, were conceived according to functional types of object rather than their visceral qualities.

The disciplines that Gaetano Pesce has mastered during nearly five decades of a rich and accomplished career are multiple. He is a designer, an architect, an urban planner, a citizen of the world, a political thinker, a poet, a storyteller, a therapist, an anthropologist, a tastemaker, and one of the most creative people I have ever met. Today, we cannot tell the story of modern design without including his revolutionary Feltri Chair, colorful Sansone table, or the Donna Chair, which reminds us of the ever challenged place of women in our society.

At the cavernous entrance to Pier 57 in Chelsea, an ancient loading dock has become a makeshift stage for the work of Gaetano Pesce, the 74-year-old Italian design legend who moved to New York 32 years ago because the city “was the capital of the 20th century.” He arrived with a splash, one of a who’s who of modern Italian designers included in MoMA’s groundbreaking 1972 show “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape.” But Pesce hasn’t had a comprehensive solo show in his adopted hometown since a 1999 exhibit tucked away at Columbia University’s School of Architecture. “He’s a legend and a New Yorker, so that tragedy needed to be corrected,” said Steven Learner, the creative director of the new Collective.1 Design Fair, where Pesce’s retrospective opened today.

On Friday, April 12, at the artist reception for the new exhibit at Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, a reporter asked Courtney Love what the best part was about celebrity. She answered "The guy behind the ticket counter is nice to you, sometimes."

And the worst? She sighed, and gave a look to suggest she'd been thinking about this for 100 years. "The rest of it."

New London — It was a Love fest.


At Friday's exhibition opening at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Courtney Love — the famed rocker who's showing her drawings and paintings at the museum — was surrounded no matter where she moved by a dizzying crush of people.

One person you don't necessarily associate with drawing is the rock singer Courtney Love. But this weekend, her artwork, paired with photography by David LaChapelle, will be seen in a show titled "Mentoring Courtney Love" at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Conn.

A reporter once referred to the famed fashion photographer David LaChapelle as a "genuine man caught up in a superficial world." The same could be said for his apparent mentee, Courtney Love, whose raw, childlike artworks — on view starting next week at The Lyman Allyn Art Museum — are seemingly inspired by the photographer's archives. While David LaChapelle is known for his glossy, fantastical images that rely heavily on pretense, Love's unaffected, bare-bones portraits offer a fresh perspective on the steroidal glamour that fashion and fame are known for. The juxtaposition of their works results in a valuable dialogue regarding our celeb-hungry culture of excess and the inherent paradox of being a famous artist, one between two people who know those subjects very well.

Primarily known for his work in architecture, urban planning and design, Gaetano Pesce is sharing another string of his creative quiver with “L’Abbraccio (The Hug),” a solo exhibition open at Fred Torres Collaborations until May 25. The exhibition aims to explore issues of love and empathy through the interplay of painting, sketches, sculpture, video, furniture, and architectural models. Grouped into three rooms of the gallery, these works and their imaginative interpretation of modernism as a method strike an aesthetic harmony in echoing and rhyming with the architectural and design work for which Pesce has become known.

To make a gross generalization, most artists spend their careers plumbing the depths of their personal lives for inspiration. Designers, on the other hand, are thought of as universalists: they create for consensus, not themselves. Gaetano Pesce, the 73-year-old Italian architect-artist, is the rare kind of maker who does both.

Carter Ratcliff ha definito il suo lavoro "un riflesso di noi stessi, con cui Pesce riesce a farci comprendere che armadi o altri elementi di arredo con un interno, sono come i nostri stessi corpi" . E l'opera che più di tutte riassume l'intento dell'artista è la stessa che dà il titolo alla personale ospitata dalla galleria Fred Torres Collaborations di New York (527 West 29th st. tra la 10th e 11th Ave): "L'Abbraccio". Inaugurata lo scorso 21 marzo, e in allestimento fino al 25 maggio, la mostra ospita 35 maquette (scala da 1:10), dei più famosi progetti realizzati dal visionario designer e architetto Gaetano Pesce, dal 1970 ad oggi, che dopo 25 anni torna in mostra a New York.

A long overdue solo show for designer, architect, and artist Gaetano Pesce opened last week at Fred Torres Collaborations in Chelsea, New York. Despite his work being shown in galleries and museums the world over and receiving numerous high-profile awards in architecture and design throughout his career, a solo New York exhibition has eclipsed him until now. It would be hard to contain Mr. Pesce to one label as his work often treads the line between piece of art and work of design. The show, titled L’Abbraccio (the Embrace), narrows his body of work down to define Gaetano Pesce, the artist.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) became famous for asking this question in Sonnet 43, How Do I love thee? Let me count the ways. In the case of the latest show at Fred Torres Collaborations for Gaetano Pesce that the three kinds of love count more than the sum of its parts. This was his first solo New York exhibition in 25 years in which you behold Pesce’s multitude of talents as an architect, designer and artist.

In the center of the Venn diagram that overlaps "artist," "philosopher," "designer" and "architect" sits Gaetano Pesce. The 73-year-old Italian has spent more than a half century designing objects that defy description, furniture fraught with deeper meaning and buildings so visionary that most have never been built. He has crafted ashtrays in the shape of bleeding hands, doorways overhung by buttocks and sofas that pay homage to the Manhattan skyline. No color has been neglected, and no material has been safe: Rags and extruded polyurethane have been formed into armchairs; vinyl disks have been turned into shoes. Resin? It's to Mr. Pesce as teak was to the Danes.

Gaetano Pesce is known for his furniture, rather than his art. But in a solo show at Fred Torres Collaborations in Chelsea, Pesce is showing his work for the first time in 25 years including his art from the 1970's and some recent material he created for the Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan. As part of our Gallery Night series, ARTINFO spoke to exhibit curator Fred Torres.

In the last decade, Gaetano Pesce has been honored with retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou in France, Triennale di Milano in Italy and Vitra Museum in Germany, yet when his exhibition L’Abbraccio opens at Fred Torres Collaborations in Chelsea on March 21st, it will mark the first time the 74-year-old Italian designer has had a significant solo show in his adopted hometown in more than 25 years. Despite having moved here in 1983, “until now I didn’t exist in New York,” Pesce mused recently as we spent the afternoon together in his Soho showroom. “A lot of people think I live in Italy, but here, I don’t exist.”

At the grand age of 74, Gaetano Pesce shows no signs of slowing down. In the last six months, the seasoned designer and artist has colluded with galleries around the world to present several new creations, including tables in London and jewellery in Paris. This week sees the unveiling of 'L'Abbraccio', his first solo exhibition in 25 years in his adopted hometown of New York, which will not only showcase furniture pieces, but also maquettes, lighting and rare drawings that date back to the 1970s.

Gaetano Pesce has called New York home for decades now, but he has not had a show in his adopted city since one at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979. That will be remedied in March with an exhibition that will run through May 25 at the Fred Torres Gallery. The show is entitled L’Abbraccio (The Hug) and includes furniture and designed objects as well as drawings and gouaches and a video. The two signature pieces in the exhibition are both cabinets, one figurative, showing a man and woman hugging, and the second, an homage to the World Trade Center’s twin towers, now almost a dozen years gone, expressed in brilliant saturated colors.

SCOPE’s flagship fair returns to New York City in 2013 with a distinguished landmark venue: Skylight at Moynihan Station. New York City’s iconic former post office will host a series of highly curated events; SCOPE is honored to be among this elite group selected for the remarkable opportunity of culturally programming an historic New York City landmark.

In the year I have written for AF then couple that with so many art openings, shows, previews, and fairs in New York City even beyond, it merits a time to reminisce on 2012 and its kaleidoscopic array of visual arts. It is filled with so much wonder and surprises. But best of all, the privilege of writing for this online blog has given me great things beyond words. Besides outlining the notable shows I have attended – I am putting forth my BEST in SHOW as a personal stamp of what I love about art. So here’s to the year that was and anticipating the year that will be in 2013.

Bigfork’s newest art gallery is designed to show off the art it plans to bring to downtown’s art scene. Simple yet modern, its white walls glare over one table on a newly finished wooden floor.

The paintings hang exactly between roof and floor — a row of color that pops from one piece to the next, drawing the eye to breath in context and the mind to contemplate work that seems to drip with social commentary.

Artist George Rahme finds inspiration in abandoned cultural capital engrained in our collective memory as kitsch; throwaways in a society inundated by imagery. The backdrop of industrial Detroit lends context to Rahme's meticulously assembled collages, which often concern themselves with themes of ruin and rebirth.

In art school, sketchbooks were de rigueur to the discipline and building to create work. They contained “sketches” or doodles of inspiration, scribbled lines of poetry, indecipherable notations that can only be unlocked by the author and secrets within myriads of drawings or written text filling every blank surface. It is said to be the very heart and the diary of an artist. Fred Torres Collaborations showed 20 sketchbooks compiled by the artist, Madeleine Gekiere. The current exhibition has afforded everyone an intimate look into the artistry and life of this gem of an artist.

Body/Objects: Works by 10 Photographers is a curated group exhibition added as a special project for FOTOFOCUS, the first biennial celebration of photographic arts in Cincinnati.

If you have occasion in the next two months to wander by Public Pool art gallery in Hamtramck, chances are good you will see collage artist George Rahme hard at work in the pop-up studio space he has established there, which opened this Saturday, September 15th.

Even though people have bombarded me with news of the great things Public Pool has been doing, this was the first time I stopped by this new gallery space (opened in 2010). In a postcard moment, as I walked toward the gallery, the current artist-in-residence, George Rahme, was outside talking to a mother and child about the art space. This space is the essence of community and open discourse. Below is my full interview with George.

This past Friday I drove to Hamtramck, Michigan. Hamtramck is a culturally diverse home to a lot of musicians and fine artists, and it is almost completely surrounded by Detroit. An old “Welcome to Hamtramck” sign guides you in, past old shops and new endeavors, and a new addtion- a slew of impressive street art, past the celebrated Planet Ant Theatre. And finally, I arrive at my destination: Public Pool, a recently opened gallery space.

Fred Torres Collaborations is honored to be the first American gallery to collaborate with Ji Dachun, Beijing's most talked about artist. We are delighted to invite you to hear Ji Dachun talk about his captivating new exhibition, Splendid Isolation, which is on view through September 15, 2012. Please join us this Thursday, August 9th at 6:30 for the artist talk led by Jonathan Goodman.

An opening reception of Ji Dachun’s solo exhibition “Splendid Isolation” was held on August 2 at Fred Torres Collaborations, a gallery Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. As his first solo show in the United States...

Please join us on Thursday, July 26th from 5-8pm for a reception in the gallery during this year's Chelsea Art Walk. The gallery will be open late and will feature Luca Pizzaroni's Bianco Trash exhibition.

This is great opportunity to see this wonderful exhibition before its final day (July 27th)!

Before Kurt, Francis Bean, Hole, and rehab, rockstar widow, rockstar-in-her-own-right, and one-woman publicity maelstrom Courtney Love studied fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute. Unsurprisingly, Love's visual art is a lot like her music...

The exhibition Figure and Form in Contemporary Photography highlights recent acquisitions

Curated by Edward Robinson, Curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department

On View: July 22, 2012 - October 14, 2012

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Everything is art. Relating to the current world of art, no sentence could be better-chosen than this one, as the Italian artist Luca Pizzaroni shows us with his new exhibition “Bianco Trash” on view at Fred Torres Collaborations in New York from June 21 to July 27.

In 12 years spent living in Chinatown, photographer Luca Pizzaroni has shot countless urban street scenes. But this year, what's on the street itself led him to travel an hour outside of the city—to a garbage dump in East Brunswick, N.J. "I was curious to see where trash goes," he said...Pizzaroni's curiosity led him there to create "Bianco Trash," a series of richly colorful photographs of garbage-dump trash and acrylic paintings on black garbage bags that will be shown at the art gallery Fred Torres Collaborations from Thursday through July 27...

Any number of wonderful things happened while I was away in New York, and one sad thing. And, strange though it might be, one of the wonderful things was connected to the one sad thing.

A few years ago, while spending a month in San Miguel, Mexico, I met a very nice couple from Seattle, and in telling them what I do and recommending a few books, I found out that they had just - that very week - purchased a drawing by the illustrator of one of my favorite children's books, right there in a gallery in town. That is how I came to own a Madeleine Gekiere original for myself, and how I came to possess her contact information...

The artist, who has penchant for embedding cultural references or humorous asides in his painstakingly choreographed works, walks the line between sublime beauty, disorderly decadence, and comedic kitsch. Through acts of visual trickery, he transmutes the polished perfection of Baroque compositions of flowers, fruits, masks, classical busts, and candles into the medium of photography. As opulent as they first appeared, these knowingly delusional images carried a whiff of emptiness and decay...

Fred Torres Collaborations presents THE MONKEY CHANNEL, a new play with dance by choreographer John Byrne, featuring Debra Zalkind and Natasha Murray: Sat. June 16 at 7 pm and Sun. June 17 at 4 pm at Fred Torres Collaborations, 527 West 29th St (between 10th and 11th Avenues), New York, NY

Tickets are $15 at the door

The Eric Firestone Gallery will pre­sent “The Haberdashery,” an exhibition inspired by high-end men’s clothiers, with an opening reception on Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m.According to the gallery, the word haberdashery “conjures vintage clothiers the likes of Beau Brummell, whose tailored trousers and neat cravats helped to revolutionize menswear in 19th-century England ... Such style would not have been possible without the haberdasher...

Raw and Emotional. These are two words that immediately come up when you gaze upon her drawings. They have female figures in them that are either self-portraits or a representation of a character. Done mainly in colored pencils, markers, pastels, and watercolors that each piece is a stark depiction of a woman’s innate desire to love and be loved. Mixed in with her drawings are written texts, lines of poetry and thought provoking musical lyrics. There are also white tattered dresses as installations...

As for artist of the year, AFTAM chair David Genser and gala chair Lauren Etess Schwartz paid tribute to David LaChapelle. LaChapelle, 49, donated a limited edition print of his painting, "First I Need Your Hand, Then Forever Can Begin," valued at $10,000, the proceeds of which will benefit the museum. Among the artists who applauded were James Rosenquist, Donald Sultan, Nir Hod, Boaz Vaadia, Marylyn Dintenfass and Oded Halahmy. Also architect Preston Scott Cohen...

Though most of New York’s satellite art fairs remain tied to the March dates of the Armory Show, Pulse organizers took a gamble and moved their show to May to coincide with the newly launched Frieze New York...Chelsea’s Fred Torres had a couple Courtney Loves and a large David LaChapelle on display, but work from 93-year-old Swiss native Madeleine Gekiere stood out. Her two pieces—an untitled oil painting and an untitled watercolor—were dark, alluring, meticulously detailed...

The women in Love's artwork all seem very distinctly Courtney — the pieces look like part-nightmare and part-fantasy, but you get the feeling they're all too real. This is Courtney's latest attempt to rise from the ash of her eternal flame, and it's her third act, not ours. But every woman in that room probably does relate to something in the art, whether it's depicting a Birkin bag or is a "cunt"-embroidered tattered white dress. Courtney soundtracked our self-destructions, our break-ups, our bad days...

“Live Through This” may well be the perfect mantra for any art fair, but Courtney Love has proved to be the stand-out star of Frieze week so far, with the unveiling of the first ever exhibition of her own work at Fred Torres Collaborations, entitled “And She’s Not Even Pretty”. These surprisingly compelling (and surprisingly expensive, starting at $12,000) watercolours and works on paper portray the star at her most emotionally vulnerable and give the artist Karen Kilimnik—currently being much fêted at Frieze...

Entitled “And She’s Not Even Pretty,” Love’s show consists almost entirely of childlike self-portraits with angst-ridden phrases such as “No one made me cry like you made me cry,” scrawled across them. “It’s like a diary,” she explained. “There’s evidence.” A whirling dervish of cigarette smoke and disjointed sentences, Love noted that art for her is nothing new. “My mother was trying to force me to be an artist when I was little, by not giving me pink dresses and canopy beds, but African finger instruments...

Courtney Love is rarely at a loss for words. Paragraphs and pages flow out of her, a deluge of wit and warmth. Whether you are a confidant or complete stranger, Love will let you know what she is thinking, and she will let you know for a long time. So it seems natural that her artwork, which she displayed for the first time last night at Fred Torres Collaborations, would incorporate text in addition to the drawings. The drawings, sanguine watercolors and pastels of despaired or troubled women, include...

But it’s not just the darkness that gives this work depth. There’s self-awareness and surprisingly perceptive humor, too, two attributes that Love has never gotten enough credit for. Most of the images come accompanied by text, often apparently self-mocking snatches of Nirvana, Hole, and even Smashing Pumpkins lyrics. “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here,” reads the reality TV-referencing caption above the head of a blonde crying blood. The words, “But don’t you know who I am,” are scrawled...

Brazen is in fact what many people still think of the frankly notorious Love, and certainly the works in this deeply felt autobiographical show, which is entitled “And She’s Not Even Pretty,” are confrontational if deeply affecting, by turns anguished and deliberately cartoonish. Many of the figures depicted in the drawings—almost always a blonde, Love-like creature—are nude, and there is often bitterly ironic text embedded in the works: “You Just Aren’t Good Enough,” in one case, or “You Sure Know How to Hurt a Girl”...

That Courtney Love will launch her new art show tomorrow at Fred Torres Collaborations on West 29th Street with friends including Steven Klein, Sante D’Orazio, Georgina Chapman, Nate Lowman, Nur Khan and Amy Sacco . . . THAT DJ Cassidy will spin at Crown on May 7 for the Perrier-Jouët Met Gala after-party . . . THAT Brett Ratner, Candace Bushnell and Meghan McCain will attend the Greater Talent Network Speakers Bureau’s 30th anniversary gala at the United Nations tomorrow.

New York galleries usually stage their best shows to coincide with the big auctions taking place May 1-11...On May 3 Fred Torres Collaborations will open the first show of 45 drawings by rocker Courtney Love, “And She’s Not Even Pretty.” Look for doll-like figures, poetic lines and lots of drama.

Courtney is a wild card, but as the saying goes, it takes one to know one. Encouraged by Fred Torres and David LaChapelle to channel creative energy and pursue this body of work of mostly drawings in pencil, pastel and watercolor. No stranger to contradictions, Courtney’s drawings show adolescent vulnerability with adult strength. They contain an autobiographical dreamlike realism contrasting desire and love. Poetic evidence here is still open to interpretation.

Opening: Courtney Love, “And She’s Not Even Pretty,” at Fred Torres Collaborations
You know Courtney Love as a musician, actress and wife of Kurt Cobain. You may not know the Hole front-woman studied fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1980’s. Apart from practicing celebrity as an art form, she’s also been drawing throughout her life and will be presenting her work for the first time. Whether or not David LaChapelle and Julian Schnabel are her mentors, which they are...

Celebrity art shows usually don't merit much serious aesthetic consideration. But when the celebrity in question is Courtney Love -- the volatile Hole frontwoman and sometimes actress -- attention should be paid, if only to see how her outrageous personality expresses itself through art. "And She's Not Even Pretty" is set to open this week at Fred Torres Collaborations in New York. The show is to feature more than 45 of Love's drawings, some of them of an explicit nature and many featuring...

The collection features an array of mediums from colored pencil to watercolor and a lot of them include excerpts from songs or famous poems. The women in the works of art are depicted as “fraught and doll-like” and aim to elicit a range of emotions from “tormented, lamenting romances shattered and the devastation of rejection” to “sexual desire and the insecurity of new love.” Love said that she was encouraged to be an artist from a young age by her mother and that may be where her current artistic...

A title she once used for a zine in the early '90s, "And She's Not Even Pretty" references the way girls put down other girls, in respect to boys. The images are a series of fraught, doll-like women in vulnerable mental states, with sexuality driving much of the collection. Love's desire to paint stems partially from her childhood, when her mother insisted she be an artist, buying her easels and African instruments to encourage her. "It's embracing this thing in my life that haunted me," Love said...

The peculiar, haunting photos Dare Wright created to illustrate her 1957 children’s book, The Lonely Doll, have attracted fans such as photographers Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons and David LaChapelle. Wright created an entire world and narrative around her doll, who is befriended by two stuffed bears. The story of Edith, who “lived in a nice house and had everything she needed except somebody to play with” echoes Wright’s own sometimes isolated childhood. More than 30 images

If you missed the NYC gallery opening of David Lachapelle's new exhibit we suggest you take some time to check it out here. The series entitled Earth Laughs in Flowers is a new approach from the photographer where in place of provocative females and blow ups the subjects are strictly nature mort. Taking reference to the Baroque style oil paintings LaChappeles photographs are the epitome of "a twist" containing wilted and poisonous arrangements displayed amongst modern day items such as...

HOW MANY of you remember the 1957 book, "The Lonely Doll," written by Dare Wright. It contained a spare, touching text and the author's haunting black-and-white photographs. "The Lonely Doll." became a classic in its time. And Wright's 19 other books remain popular as well. Dare Wright died in 2001. She was a great beauty, also an artist and fashion model. Tomorrow, at the Fred Torres Collaborations gallery...

LaChapelle’s tendency to go way over the top can either spark his work or sabotage it. Fortunately, this series of enormous, outrageous photographs of flower arrangements is terrific—at once gorgeous and gross. At the center of each image is a vase overflowing with flowers in the voluptuous style of Baroque paintings, but all that lush beauty is grounded in a disorderly pile of pop-culture junk: headless Barbies, “Good Luck” balloons, Flintstones vitamins, Cheetos, a cell phone. The pictures mock the...

Fred Torres Collaborations with the School of Visual Arts and Dear Dave, Magazine
present David LaChapelle in conversation with Lyle Rexer, Mon. March 12 at 6:30 pm
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St (between 8th and 9th Avenues), New York, NY

Free and open to the public

Conversation: David LaChapelle in Conversation with Lyle Rexer at SVA Theater

As part of the “Dear Dave” conversation series at the School of Visual Arts Theater, which brings together an internationally renowned photographer with a critic, curator, writer or artist, David LaChapelle will be in conversation with Lyle Rexer, a New York-based writer and critic, in conjunction with Mr. LaChapelle’s current exhibition, “Earth Laughs in Flowers,” at Fred Torres Collaborations. If you haven’t been...

David LaChapelle in Conversation with Lyle Rexer at SVA

Famed photographer David LaChapelle, whose exhibit of lush, semi-pornographic still lives just opened at Fred Torres, chats with art critic Lyle Rexer as part of SVA's "Dear Dave" series, which pairs a photographer with a contemporary critic.

SVA, 33 W. 23rd St. 6:30 p.m. Free.

Celebrated commercial photographer-turned-visual artist David LaChapelle’s latest exhibition, a series of 10 large-scale photographs called “Earth Laughs in Flowers,” is now on display at Fred Torres Collaborations in New York City. The collection juxtaposes Baroque floral still lifes with modern-day items such as cellphones, cigarette butts and Starbucks coffee cups, in an effort to explore “contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility...

Best known for his surreal and fantastical fashion and celebrity photography, LaChapelle’s new works are studies in super-saturated, garish kitsch, matching traditional bouquets of flowers with the trash, ephemera and plastic culture of modern consumer life. You have flowers surrounded and overshadowed by plastic dolls, pills, decaying fruit, sagging balloons and half-eaten foodstuffs. Take it as the other side of the American Dream (pace the Ruins of Detroit) or another statement by LaChapelle...

“I don’t think it’s a departure,” Mr. LaChapelle told Gallerist about his still lifes. “I stopped doing celebrity fashion in 2006 to make a home in Hawaii where I live today. And then I got asked to show at galleries again. And I just embraced that new option.” He spoke slowly and sincerely. “But it was where I originally began in New York. Galleries in New York. They’re the same ideas that I was dealing with as a kid in the ’80s.” The room was so crowded you could hardly see the artwork. In some cases...

It was quite by chance that she hit upon the idea of beauty pageants for young girls. Using traditional portraiture techniques to probe into their world, she produced detailed pictures capturing expressions of fear and disimay that traditional pageant imagery glosses over. Depictions of her subjects’ vulnerability allude to the darker side of youthful beauty. The little princesses are placed on pedestals but are depicted as if they are in danger. About 20 of these works can be viewed at her solo show...

Last November 2011, Arte Fuse covered the show of Gretchen Ryan “Cheers in Heaven” and it was a beautiful exploration of capturing child innocence heightened by the provocative sexuality ingrained in the culture of competitive cheerleading. This time the artist brings her A-Game to Singapore with her first exhibition “Hearts for Eyes” in Singapore along with her New York Gallery, Fred Torres Collaborations. The Los Angeles based artist will be showcasing new paintings, charcoal drawings...

Yet, in recent years, LaChapelle has moved away from celebrity culture and the glamour associated with it, in pursuit of art with a deeper meaning, showcased in his latest exhibition 'Earth Laughs in Flowers' at London's Robilant + VOENA gallery. "I feel a responsibility when I'm making photographs. There's more expected of a picture hanging on a gallery wall than a picture in a magazine. I take that seriously and I try to be very clear when I don't think a lot of contemporary art makes that attempt,"...

Specially commissioned paintings, charcoal drawings and photographs from this LA-based artist, who lost the use of her legs in a car crash as a teenager. Her works focus on portraits of young beauty pageant contestants, exploring themes of objectification, sexuality and innocence.

Last week, artist David LaChapelle unveiled “Earth Laughs In Flowers,” a vibrant, vanitas-inspired spate of photos masquerading, sort of, as paintings. The series debuted at Hanover's Kestner-Gesellschaft museum before going on a tour of Europe, and finally landing in NYC until March 24 at Fred Torres Collaborations. The Daily rang LaChapelle for the dish on his artistic process—which included decayed flowers, balloons, and burning cigarettes—and some touching tidbits from LaChapelle’s...

Your new body of work features photographs of baroque flower arrangements. As someone who became famous photographing people, what draws you to this surprising new genre?
I love stories/narratives that can be found in the old masters’ still lifes. Every object and even certain flowers carry symbolic meaning. For me it’s about the “vanitas,” the idea of transitions in life, nature, and how they remind us of our own mortality...

The iconic fashion and celebrity photographer cum fine artist David LaChapelle turns his surrealistic gaze to the Baroque stylings of Old Master painters in his latest exhibition, Earth Laughs in Flowers. In Earth Laughs In Flowers, an exhibition of 10 large scale photographs by David LaChapelle, currently on view at several galleries worldwide (in New York, London, and Milan) the internationally lauded photographer, now working primarily as a fine artist, is inspired by and appropriates...

During the opening of David LaChapelle’s new exhibition “Earth Laughs in Flowers” at Fred Torres Collaborations last Thursday, a woman was crying and shaking slightly in the back office. Between sobs, the woman, a photographer named Katrina Eugenia, talked to Mr. LaChapelle who was in a porkpie hat and a striped shirt. “I’m an enormous fan,” she said after Mr. LaChapelle disappeared, “and I’m just overwhelmed to be here.” She wiped away a tear. Mr. LaChapelle came out with a catalog...

Fred Torres Collaborations is proud to present an exhibition with artist David LaChapelle featuring a new series of still lifes entitled "Earth Laughs in Flowers." This series will be presented in the United States for the first time in its entirety at Fred Torres Collaborations in New York. David LaChapelle is known internationally for his exceptional talent in combining a unique hyper-realistic aesthetic with profound social messages. LaChapelle’s photography career began in the 1980’s when...

A line stretched out of the gallery at Fred Torres Collaborations, but it wasn't for Madonna. David LaChapelle's new photography show, "Earth Laughs In Flowers," is devoid of the celebrity images that made him famous. The painterly photos feature Baroque flowers surrounded by modern disarray such as pill bottles, cigarettes and cellphones. A very tightly squeezed crowd, which included Courtney Love, Daphne Guinness, model Hana Soukupova and night-life icon Amanda Lepore...

Please join us for an artist talk with David LaChapelle
At the WeWork Lounge in SoHo Friday, Feb. 24th at 6:30pm
Tickets will be $10 at the door - first come, first serve
All proceeds to benefit Smile Train

Less than 24 hours before David LaChapelle opened his new exhibition at a walk-up gallery on New York’s West 29th Street, the photographer stopped by to see how things were coming along. The staff had hung the last of his large-scale, still-life Baroque-style flower photographs minutes before his arrival and LaChapelle walked around the room slowly, nodding in approval. If he was nervous about the Thursday night opening, he didn’t show it. 

The press release about LaChapelle’s new series...

Photographer David LaChapelle opened his new “traditional Baroque still-life paintings” exhibition in New York last night. He spent more than 20 years shooting for the likes of Vanity Fair, GQ, and Rolling Stone and now spends the majority of his time on fine art projects like this one.

For every season, there is a time and reason. And what better time for legendary artistic photographer, David LaChapelle, to share his abundant work of ten large photographs at Fred Torres Collaborations with an opening reception last February 23, 2012 for his show “Earth Laughs in Flowers”. Since initially showing this series in Hannover, Germany last year – this is the first time it will be shown in its entirety in the United States. The title was taken from the Ralph Waldo Emerson poem...

Time was, David LaChapelle’s hyperrealistic, slightly subversive photography was everywhere you looked. His portraits of everyone from Madonna to Hillary Clinton were mainstays on the magazine rack, and then—poof—after years of unparalleled success (and the release of a highly acclaimed documentary in 2005), he seemed to disappear from the public eye altogether. “I did disappear,” LaChapelle says, back in New York briefly for the opening of his new show, “Earth Laughs in Flowers,”...

Last night, the art crowd gathered at the Fred Torres Collaborations gallery for Earth Laughs In Flowers, a new exhibit of still life photographs by famed photographer, David LaChapelle. At first glance, the photos feature expansive and lush flowers reminiscent of paintings by the Dutch Masters but, upon closer inspection, elements of LaChapelle's signature blend of wealthy excess and the grotesque are present: phallic doll parts, Cheetos, pill bottles and toilet paper peek out...

Making its US debut at Fred Torres Collaborations, Earth Laughs in Flowers, a new series of ten large-scale photographs by David LaChapelle, is shockingly devoid of celebrities. Rather, these painterly images take their inspiration from the floral still-life paintings of the 1600s - think Jan Brueghel - and playfully subvert the tradition, modernizing the scene a bit with the inclusion of discarded cigarette butts, cellphones, Starbucks cups, and Barbie dolls. The colorful, chaotic works...

Fred Torres Collaborations (FTC) announced today that it now represents David LaChapelle in New York. LaChapelle who has a new show opening Thursday, “Earth Laughs in Flowers,” a series of 10 large-scale still-life photographs, had his last show, “From Darkness to Light,” in 2011 at Lever House, and in 2010 he presented a solo show “American Jesus,” at Paul Kasmin Gallery. While FTC has “managed LaChapelle’s fine art career since 2005″ according to its press release, a gallery assistant...

David is not in New York, I was told. He's at home in Hawaii and would like to do a phone interview.

When I dialed David's number 'Shawn' answered. "Hi Annie, would you mind calling back in fifteen minutes? The veterinarian is here. He and David are seeing to the goats." Suddenly the scenario took on a quite a surreal aspect. There I was, sitting in my Manhattan apartment, a smidgen apprehensive about talking to the world famous photographer who is renowned for his extravagant fashion shots and glamorous portraits of every mega-celebrity you can think of. Yet this afternoon...

This Thursday artist David LaChapelle will debut a new exhibit of deceptively decorative floral still-lifes entitled “Earth Laughs In Flowers.” You can see a sampling of works in the collection here. The title of the exhibition comes from a poem by Emerson in which nature mocks mankind’s arrogance. Here’s more: In “Earth Laughs In Flowers” David LaChapelle appropriates the traditional Baroque still life painting in order to explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions...

They are not subtle pictures. And part of the criticism is based around the idea that popularity demeans artistic credibility. From LaChapelle's perspective, he wanted "to convey what was, in my mind, a paradox about consumption, that sort of decadence, selling the idea that happiness was going to come with the next acquisition, the next hard-to-get handbag for some insane price. I was questioning those values that were distracting from what was going on"...

Titled Earth Laughs in Flowers, this exhibition consists of 10 works of different dimensions, glazed C-prints shot from 2008 to 2011, which revisit the foundations of seventeenth-centrury art, in particular the Flemmish tradition, but also, for example, the mastery of Mario "de' Fiori" of the Roman baroque period and his floral still life. David LaChapelle has given life to opulent images, rich with brilliant, vibrant colors, which appear to be elsewhere, filtered, misty with a vanitas surface sensation...

In collaboration with Anthology Film Archives, Fred Torres Collaborations is pleased to present the short films of Madeleine Gekiere. The screening coincides with the exhibition Madeleine Gekiere, on view through February 18. In the 1970’s and 1980’s her experiments in over 20 Super-8mm and 16mm films screened extensively throughout the U.S. Gekiere wrote in the program notes for a screening at the Collective for Living Cinema, “My early films were also...

Photographer David LaChapelle, most famous for his striking and surreal celebrity images, is now exhibiting a stunning collection of ten large-scale photographs ‘Earth Laughs in Flowers’ in Dover Street, London. Bazaar speaks to the creator of these meticulous still lives about sexuality in springtime and why he’s now happier than ever before. What was your inspiration for this collection? 
I was inspired by a great love for Old Master paintings and still life - of vanities...

In Earth Laughs In Flowers David LaChapelle appropriates the traditional Baroque still life painting in order to explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity. Expectations of the still life are satisfied through the inclusion of symbolic objects such as fruit. flowers and skulls, but also upended by the insertion of everyday items such as cell phones, cigarette butts, balloons, Barbies, and a Starbuck's iced coffee cup...

A protégé of Andy Warhol, the celebrated photographer David LaChapelle is internationally known for taking the pop-art sensibility to heights Warhol probably couldn't have imagined. Whether you consider his extravagant celebrity portraits, fashion shots and elaborate tableaux to be works of imaginative virtuoso or over-the-top kitsch, they can often be as compelling as a car crash - a recipe for success that Warhol knew very well. The exhibition "Thus Spoke LaChapelle" is the latest...

Featuring: David LaChapelle with Robert Draper, plus Kitra Cahana, Gillian Laub, Cirenaica Moreira, Paolo Pellegrin with Anthony Bannon, Robin Schwartz, and Anthony Suau of Facing Change.

PRAGUE.- David LaChapelle (born 1963 in Farmington, Connecticut, USA) has ranked among the world’s most eminent photographers since the mid-1990s. His work has exerted an influence on dozens of other artists and over time, LaChapelle has evolved a style entirely his own, one which is recognizable at first glance. In the context of his exhibitions, the present show, entitled Thus Spoke LaChapelle and held at Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague, occupies a unique place...

Fred Torres Collaborations is proud to share a limited edition print of Gretchen Ryan's Bambi.
Please consider donating this year to Nextstep Fitness to support our artist.
Proceeds go to Nextstep Fitness, a promising new physical therapy program for Gretchen

Christopher Davison usually works small. His drawings and prints are dark, fairy tale dreamscapes that involve enormous numbers of details made with a wide variety of mostly tiny marks. But when the opportunity arose to create a wall-scale piece — a mural, in fact, on a gallery wall — Davison took a leap of faith and plunged right in. The resulting black and white mural in Gallery 817 at University of the Arts was a triumph of content, style, imagination and just plain hard work...

At the press conference introducing his current Gallery Rudolfinum exhibition, photographer David LaChapelle said of his images — recognized around the world for their hyper-vibrant color and provocative nature — that he never “sets out to shock.” He certainly turned heads, however, when making his entrance into a packed house with a young man and a tall, dark handsome model, whom he later introduced as Perry, wearing a tight pink mini dress, sunglasses and black stilettos...

Painter, Photographer and multi-media artist Gretchen Ryan, who is currently Los Angeles based, premiered her new show “Cheers in Heaven” at the Fred Torres Collaborations Gallery in Downtown Chelsea area on November 15, 2011. Her imagery depicted throughout the colorful paintings and photographs were of youthful beauty queen-like ladies. One of these young ladies, thought to be the muse of the collection, was actually present...

“Gretchen Ryan is one of those people that you meet and instantly fall in love with, or at least I did. Her energy seems almost saint-like, above gossip and frowns. She also is supermodel gorgeous, a tremendous artist, sweet as pie, and genuinely seems to care deeply about every living creature..."

Provocative celebrity portraits brought him fortune and fame, but David LaChapelle seems well over that whole scene. "Celebrities and fashion photography were a means to an end," the artist said on Monday at a press conference at the Seoul Arts Center in southern Seoul. The 48-year-old was here for the opening of a retrospective of his work at the Hangaram Design Museum, which will run until Feb. 26. In fact, he seemed resentful of the word "provocative" when used...

Provocative, surreal yet stunningly artistic, that's how the works of David LaChapelle, 48, a renowned photographer are esteemed. But LaChapelle was surprisingly humble and soft-spoken, who openly shared his life story including his withdrawl from the world and his unadorned take on art. He is in Korea for his retrospective exhibition, "David LaChapelle," which will be held at the Hanman Design Museum at Seoul Art Center (SAC), southern Seoul, through FEb. 26, 2012...

Gretchen Ryan, a Los Angeles based artist and friend of David Lachapelle, had her opening last night, November 15, 2011 at the Fred Torres Collaborations gallery for her new solo exhibition “Cheers in Heaven”. The works on view include photographs, realist paintings and charcoal drawings. Gretchen has worked with young girls before in her previous show all based in the subculture of child beauty pageants. Some of the girls Ryan has followed...

In a project that recalls Louise Lawler's ongoing investigation of art objects as fetishes and commodities, Gonzales-Day photographs statuary in the storerooms of European and American museums. His interest in representations of race, gender, and class results in a number of pointed juxtapositions of white, black, and ethnic subjects that are obvious but effective. In one image, an American Indian bronze in a loincloth gestures aggressively...

OCT. 14 Courtney Love celebrating with David LaChapelle as his Alexander McQueen portrait was inducted into the National Portrait Gallery in London.

This artist book is the first in a series of PAC (Photographic Arts Council) Prize editions, published by the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lead support is generously provided by the Photographic Arts Council of LACMA. The PAC Prize acknowledges the central role played by books in the history of photography. It is awarded biennially to photographic artists or curators whose development will be fostered by a....

It's all about unique new perspectives at the Texas Contemporary Art Fair, which features over 50 galleries specializing in the work of today's most innovative artists. "Everything's going well so far and it's still only the preview," Fredericka Hunter, who founded Houston's Texas Gallery in the late 1970s, said at the Thursday night event which kicked off the festival. "We were one of top 10 performing galleries at Art Platform-Los Angeles a few weeks ago. I hope it goes just as well..."

'Burning Down the House,' a portrait by David LaChapelle of the late ALexander McQueen and his 'muse' Isabella Blow has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. This is the first portrait by LaChapelle to enter the Gallery's Collection and will be exhibited in the United Kingdom for the first time from Friday 14 October 2011. The double portrait of McQueen and Blow was originally published in the March 1977 'Swinging London' edition of Vanity Fair...

A photograph of the late great fashion designer Alexander McQueen and his muse the magazine editor Isabella Blow has been bought by the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London. Burning Down the House by Avant Garde photographer David LaChapelle was originally published in the ‘Swinging London’ edition of Vanity Fair in 1997 .The photo "The Provocateurs" was accompanied by text about McQueen and his close friend. The portrait was shot....

The late fashion icons and friends Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow now have a permanent home together at London's National Portrait Gallery. The museum acquired David LaChapelle's infamous 1996 portrait of the fashion designer and style legend, "Burning Down the House," which made its British exhibition debut today. Originally presented as a spread in Vanity Fair's March 1997 "Swinging London" issue for an article called "The Provocateurs," the playful photograph...

Burning Down The House by surrealist photographer David LaChapelle was originally published in Vanity Fair in 1997. The shot was with an article branding McQueen and Blow "The Provocateurs". NPG director Sandy Nairne said he was "delighted" to receive the work, which is now on display in the gallery. The portrait was shot at Hedingham Castle in Essex in 1996 and shows McQueen dressed as a woman, brandishing a flaming torch...

This Saturday, I visited No Comment, an art exhibition in response to Occupy Wall Street at the historic JP Morgan Building. Sandwiched between the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall, this exhibition was the closest the protesters have gotten to actually occupying a Wall Street building with their signs and messages of economic struggle....

Last seen at the opening of The Raft in Hong Kong back in May, as well as stopping off shortly thereafter in NYC for his Lever House installation, David LaChapelle is primed to bring a selection of relevant works from perhaps lesser known periods of his artistic career to Los Angeles. Opening tonight, September 27th at the architecturally brilliant PRISM, the New York-based photographer will revive two distinct bodies of work, Negative Currency and Recollections in America...

On Tuesday evening, PRISM packed their gleaming house to present two bodies of work from noted photographer David LaChapelle — ‘Negative Currency’ and ‘Recollections in America’. The former makes ingenious use of a photo enlarger to capture both the front and back of American paper currency in one image, calling into question its stability and unquestioned value. The latter work features extremely clever manipulations of 70s photographs to which LaChapelle has added image...

Pizzaroni creates a collision of photography and painting by placing found snapshots face down on wet oils and scanning the messy, expressionistic, and chance results. The obvious, and far more elegant, precedent is Gerhard Richter’s paint-smeared photographs, but Pizzaroni’s rude exuberance can be arresting. The violence of his process is most apparent in a series of nineteen-fifties yearbook portraits that look as if they’ve been slathered in blood. More recent party pictures and figures in suburban...

In the case of Detroit "the course of time" has progressed rather quickly, basically with the onset of post-Fordism in the early 1970s, though some commentaries rightly see the seeds as having been planted in the suburbanization of the region that began soon after the Second World War. This reversal of the conceit of private property provides basis for what I have called the art of the commons, art that is neither public nor private but that exists in a space in between. And many of the practices that comprise this work have something in common with what Wark tells us about the Situationists.

Even in the Age of Gaga it's still necessary to remind the world that female artists face barriers. Yes, women are free to wear a meat dress or express themselves in any artistic way imaginable, which is an important, tectonic shift from the rigidity of decades past — but they are still struggling to pierce the armor plating of art's most sacred institutions. According to feminist artist and educator Judy Chicago, only 3% to 5% of artwork on display in the permanent collections of most major museums is by a female artist.

The best thematic group shows explore not what the disparate artists under their given rubrics might share, but rather how their differences move the chosen topic of conversation forward. The temptation with shows based on race, gender or some narrowly defined subject matter like architecture or food is to look for (often forced or overstated) commonalities. But Subliminal Projects bucks that tradition with its take on the summer-season group show, Eve, "an intelligent look at the wildly diverse...

In this candid interview, photographer David LaChapelle touches on his diverse origins, what makes a subject natural, and his complex relationship with Christianity. Perhaps best known for his dynamic, charged imagery from the 1990s, photographer David LaChapelle is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. He has emerged as a darling of the fine art photography world that had long shunned him for being too commercial. Although he spent decades capturing famous faces, it was advertisements that lent a pop aesthetic...

A typical month in the life of legendary photographer David LaChapelle is a lot like the one that started the morning after this visit -- involving a flight to say, Prague or Istanbul, thence to Hong Kong or Guadalajara, with a stop in Paris or Miami en route home to LA, along the way opening one or more hugely anticipated new exhibitions, and/or shooting a gorgeous and expensive fashion story, and/or accepting invitations to the most fabulous parties you can think of. But throughout it all, he never, ever stops working...

His shows at Lever House and Michelman Fine Art have drawn the attention, but David LaChapelle is also represented this summer by the evening-length dance Transcending Form, which he produced for his friend and frequent collaborator, choreographer John Byrne. Despite its title, the work marks a return to form for both men: for LaChapelle, a return to dance six years after his indelible krumping documentary Rize; for Byrne, a Juilliard-trained dancer, a return to balletic movement after a long stint...

Best known for his surreal celebrity portraits, startling fashion spreads and theatrical rock videos, David LaChapelle cut his teeth in New York’s downtown art scene—showing at edgy galleries, such as 303, 56 Bleecker and Tomoko Liguori—long before he achieved commercial success. Once he became a sensation in the magazine and music worlds, higher-profile galleries started exhibiting his unique brand of provocative photography, which opened the door for an escape from advertising and a return to fine art.

An ambitious evening-length contemporary dance fable created and choreographed by John Byrne, "Transcending Form" purports to express the idea of the transcending soul. All one can really garner, however, from watching the work is that people can be made to change. Through a fluent series of short dance episodes, Byrne repeatedly shows distraught characters calming down after being touched, caressed, or supported by other beings, including a woman in white named Holy Spirit.

John Byrne and David LaChapelle used to be a couple. The romance didn’t last, but the two have continued their relationship through art. Mr. Byrne, a choreographer and former dancer for Paul Taylor, worked on “Rize,” Mr. LaChapelle’s 2005 documentary about krumping, as well as “Elton John: The Red Piano.” Now Mr. LaChapelle has produced Mr. Byrne’s first full-length work of dance, “Transcending Form”...In addition, Mr. Byrne has created a structured improvisation piece at Lever House...

Robert Shuster features 'Gone With the Wind' in the Village Voice "Best in Show" column. Gerhard Richter's overpainted photographs always look a little like grade-B sci-fi: ordinary landscapes or interiors suddenly invaded by multicolored ooze. Luca Pizzaroni has done something similar with snapshots he's collected from flea markets and eBay auctions. He dips each one in variously colored oils, obscuring parts of the original image, then scans and enlarges the result—a process that blurs the textures that define...

David LaChapelle reviewed and featured as second most popular art exhibition in NYC on NYArtBeat iPhone application. The three main components presented in "From Darkness To Light" stand alone, yet inform each other to create a unified installation, utilizing photography in three ways: collage, stickers and paper chain. The pieces are inspired by the simplicity of childhood endeavors taught in early art lessons, re-imagined through the lens of adulthood. This will engage the viewer in that collective...

Christopher Musci reviews 'Transcending Form' for Sparked.biz Those who love the fusion of dance, song, and art will be thoroughly enchanted by Transcending Form a new dance work by choreographer John Byrne featuring the artwork of edgy photographer David LaChapelle. Transcending Form’s eight dancers gracefully navigate the emotional journey of its story of life, afterlife, and the transcending soul to the eclectic, yet superbly appropriate, mix of music from Schubert to Shirley Brown, Michael Jackson...

Jocelyn Silver discusses David LaChapelle's June 6th lecture at Michelman Fine Art. David LaChapelle has returned to his career. Much like the similarly-named Dave Chapelle, LaChapelle retreated to a farm after his documentary Rize flopped. But evidently nature wasn’t quite thrilling enough for him, and so he’s back in New York, with a retrospective at the Michelman Gallery and a show of new work at Lever House. I attended LaChapelle’s talk on his new exhibition at the Michelman Gallery...

For someone whose images often provoke shock and sensation, David LaChapelle is surprisingly soft-spoken in person. Over the last two decades, the US photographer has established himself as the go to guy for outrageous and outlandish celebrity portraits and fashion campaigns. Whether it's Britney Spears' coquettish schoolgirl Lolita cover for Rolling Stones, Christina Aguilera's appropriately Dirty music video, or rapper Kanye West posing as Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns, his works in print, video, film and stage...

Transcending Form, a new dance work by John Byrne is at Theater80, cool East Village art Theater. Mr. Byrne comes to choreography through his training from Julliard, School of American Ballet and North Carolina School of the Arts, as well as performing with Paul Taylor, Eric Hawkins and Patrick Corbin, to name a few. His work is narrative and earnest, eager to share his view. Gina Figueroa, a singer, in a beaded evening gown the color of a latte, begins the piece with “Precious Lord”, a spiritual...

Both the press release for David LaChapelle’s show at Michelman Fine Art and the recent New York Times profile of the artist mention the same name in their very first sentences: Andy Warhol. LaChapelle’s early work at Warhol’s Interview Magazine indeed proved pivotal in launching his career while the visible Pop inheritance has contributed to his success and idolization by many. But there is a uniquely electric feel about LaChapelle’s use of vivid neon color and the jarring displays of contorted bodies...

For the next few days, the last photo of Andy Warhol will be on display at a gallery in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Earlier this week, David LaChapelle recalled the time he spent with Warhol before he took the photo in 1986 – long before he became one of the world’s most famous photographers. Mr. LaChapelle’s presence in New York reflects another tie with the pop art pioneer: An attempt to transition from commercial success to greater recognition in the art world. Over the last 25 years, Mr. LaChapelle has...

Have you ever heard of “painthography”? I haven’t, until today. In this case, painthography, or paintography, is the purposeful manipulation of photographs with the use of paint. It’s kind of crazy, right? Luca Pizzaroni is one artist that uses this technique for his works. Pizzaroni will have his exhibition, “Gone with the Wind” display at Chelsea gallery Fred Torres Collaborations. I contacted the gallery and Elana Rubinfeld was kind enough to send me a press release for this event. For the past 20 years...

Since 2005, Fred Torres Collaborations has provided not just a project space for artists to be displayed, but also been a management company, collaborating with galleries, museums and artists around the globe. This is clearly not just another Chelsea gallery. Elana Rubinfeld of Fred Torres Collaborations was kind enough to send me the press release for their next event. The upcoming exhibition will be a photographic painting series by Luca Pizzaroni entitled "Gone with the Wind." Pizzaroni collaborated with...

From fashion photographer demi-god to farmer: David LaChappelle made a rare appearance in New York last night, with Daphne Guinness, Uma Thurman and Amanda Lepore, to open his latest exhibition. David LaChapelle has become one of the art world's most collectable photographers. He was discovered and mentored by Andy Warhol, who started the photographer's career at Interview Magazine. LaChapelle went on to create iconic images of Michael Jackson as a Jesus-like figure; model Karolina Kurkova as...

David LaChapelle, the fashion photographer turned artist, has spent his career coaxing celebrities out of their comfort zone. Brooke Shields, Naomi Campbell, and Daniel Day-Lewis all disrobed for Mr. LaChapelle. Angelina Jolie posed with a horse nibbling on her nipple. James Truman, Mr. LaChapelle’s former editor at Details Magazine, once said, “We would look at a picture that came in and say, ‘how the hell did he get them to do that?’” Mr. LaChapelle, always provocative, is also famously attuned to commercial...

David LaChapelle was the High Priest of celebrity photography for almost two decades. So why has he turned his back on fame and fashion to explore death, disaster and the end of times? // If you show anyone interested in photography a picture of your work, they will immediately say ‘LaChapelle’. Why are you so distinctive? Because I didn’t think about it too much. I went intuitively. I blew up colour at the same time grunge took over; all this black and white, people looking depressed, whereas I just exploded with colour.

We like seeing local talent rise to the top. Even more of a thrill is to see one of our own at Model D excel at what they do. In April, photographer Marvin Shaouni traveled to New York City to take part in an exhibition called "Live from Detroit." The show was curated by Monica Bowman of the Butcher's Daughter in Ferndale and features works by Kevin Beasley, Susan Goethel Campbell, Kate Daughdrill, Christina Galasso, Dick Goody, Cynthia Greig, Chido Johnson, Leon Johnson, Laith Karmo, George Rahme...

We’ve all been there: You walk into a gleaming white-box gallery where an elegant gallerina sits behind a designer table. She doesn’t seem to notice your entrance, doesn’t even deign to look up from her glowing computer screen as you walk through the hallowed rooms to see the art on the walls. If you ask her for a list of the works, she’s curt, dismissive. And you try to whisk by the expensive creations as efficiently and unobtrusively as possible. You arrive back on the sidewalk feeling beat up, befuddled...

Vince Aletti reviews Assembly: Eight Emerging Photographers from Southern California in "Goings On About Town" // Regional focus seems almost incidental to this exceptionally strong group show; what’s most striking is the intelligence and idiosyncrasy of the work that the curator, Edward Robinson, has chosen. The photographers, nearly all of whom are making their New York début here, take very different approaches to the medium, from the relatively straight...to the oddly manipulated...

Alright, who hasn’t placed a bid at BAM’s Benefit Auction yet? Time to move! The auction closes tomorrow at 6 pm. The Ryan Johnson mixed media work above needs a home. A cocktail reception will be held tomorrow from 3-6 for those wanting to hob nob a little before the auction closes. I hope to see at least a few readers there as the BAM benefit events are usually a blast. Speaking of which, this time I intend to remain sober. The last BAM auction reception I attended resulted in a little too much fun and a lost weekend.

NEW YORK— The mood was cheerful and at times even giddy at the Pulse Art Fair's opening yesterday. Maybe that's because "Pulse is consistently good," as one peppy fairgoer told ARTINFO. Or maybe it's the welcoming environment, since, as artist and independent curator Valeri Larko noted, "they feed you, which is really nice." Everyone seemed pleased with the new Metropolitan Pavilion venue on Chelsea's 18th Street. (Losing the trek to West Street on the outer reaches of the West Village certainly...

Pulse 2011, a fair more oriented towards emerging national US galleries than the Armory, ADAA or Independent, took place in a well-lit, pleasant space on West 18th Street that had more in common with a high-end mall than a convention center. Wooden floors throughout gave the fair a cohesive feeling and gallery walls were never too close together. Unfortunately, most of the art on view was just as anodyne as the space itself. One of the clear dominant trends of this fair season is the marked return of figurative...

Online art is having a moment. The VIP Art Fair—the first exclusively-online art fair—had its inaugural show last month; heavyweights Dasha Zhukova, Larry Gagosian and Eric Schmidt are launching Art.sy, dubbed the Pandora for art, this spring; and back in December, Bill Powers entered the online art arena, along with his wife Cynthia Rowley and her business partner Laura Martin, with Exhibition A. Although Powers is no stranger to art dealing (his contemporary art space, Half Gallery, is mobbed on opening nights)...

"Do I want a corridor or do I want an experience every time I walk in the door?" Daphne Guinness asked herself one recent afternoon. Of course she wanted the experience. So entering her new Fifth Avenue apartment, one proceeds through a hall that seems to stretch into infinity, thanks to its completely mirrored walls and ceiling. With blood-red carpet underfoot and a few striking works of contemporary art on view, including...

Everyone wants a piece of David LaChapelle. I know, because during my chat with him at Art Stage Singapore, the Singapore-based international contemporary art fair where he was showing, we were interrupted several times by gallery owners, art dealers and fans-the bold ones, who came by to introduce themselves and fawn over him with many more waiting in his wings. To his credit, the tall casually dressed LaChapelle graciously talked to each and every one of them while I sat by and quietly studied...

In the first institutional solo exhibition in Germany of works by the American photographer David LaChapelle (*1964), the kestnergesellschaft presents a series of new, not yet shown photographs. The series Earth Laughs in Flowers, which was created this year, refers to art-historical visual traditions but never loses sight of LaChapelle’s own artistic language. The large-format still lifes in this series, with titles such as The Lovers...

Daphne Guinness has been called "fashion's wild child" by the New York Times. New York Magazine said she lives in a "jewel box." She elicits innumerable amounts of comments, posts, blogs and profiles: an endless array of fascination. In short, she's her own fashionable tour-de-force, with her public missteps (literally) being just as followed as her very personal decision to buy the entire Isabella Blow collection five minutes before midnight just before the auction catalogue was set to be printed by Christie's...

Throughout history, artists have been inspired by the presence of certain other people in their lives that motivated them to create their best work. The source of inspiration could be a man, a woman, or even a pet, but it is almost always a being that also possesses great talent and an expressive imagination. From the model for Édouard Manet’s Olympia and Pablo Picasso’s mistress in the heyday of surrealism to Francis Bacon’s drunken pal and David LaChapelle’s doll-face girlfriend, we’ve uncovered the most...

Last week, The Observer took the elevator to the top floor of the Warren and Wetmore building on 57th Street for the opening of fordPROJECT, an art gallery started by Altpoint Capital Partners, the same company that owns Ford Models. The people in charge insisted there would be no models in attendance. “We’re not, as you see, bound at all by the constraints of fashion,” said Guerman Aliev, chairman and chief executive of Altpoint, gesturing to the model-less room. “We will not have any models coming to see this...

David LaChapelle, who was by all rights the show’s headliner, gave a Saturday afternoon lecture on commercialism in the art world to a sold-out audience. He cashed in on the weekend, selling all his work. // Art Stage Singapore, the city-state’s first high-profile contemporary art fair, promised a splash and didn’t disappoint. The event, which closed this week, drew 32,000 visitors, placing it squarely alongside ART HK as one of the region’s pre-eminent contemporary art events. (The Hong Kong fair had...

The opening this week of a new gallery in Midtown has generated unusual confusion in the worlds of art and fashion. Because the gallery’s name is fordProject, it has been promoted as a division of Ford Models, and many of us who have seen fashion climb on the back of art — and vice versa – to broaden its audience naturally assumed that the gallery was an offshoot of the agency. It isn’t. And though both are subsidiaries of Altpoint Capital, a private equity company based in Manhattan, and the gallery...

SINGAPORE—The first edition of Art Stage Singapore ended on Sunday and reported strong sales and a lively atmosphere, logging a total of 32,000 visitors who came to see contemporary artwork shown by 121 galleries from 26 countries. Fair director Lorenzo Rudolf—who helmed Art Basel from 1991 to 2000, founding Art Basel Miami Beach and later Shanghai's ShContemporary—said in a statement that "it was important that we created a quality fair with a strong Asian identity that would put Singapore on the art...

"Fairytale life stories" was the first thing that popped into the head of independent curator Lara Pan when she was asked to propose an inaugural art exhibition for Altpoint Capital Partners' new contemporary art space, FordPROJECT, located in a sprawling penthouse on 57th Street above the Ford modeling agency's women division. "I was inspired by the history of Ford [Models]," explains Pan in the context of her show, "When the Fairy Tale Never Ends," which opens January 20.

A tattooed love-heart showing just below the sleeve of his shirt, artist David LaChapelle is waving his hands in the air as he describes a work to Chinese-American collector Richard Chang over lunch at a rooftop restaurant. Opposite him at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands hotel, Christie’s International’s Jakarta chief Amalia Wirjono is giving a potted history of Indonesian art to New York gallerist Fred Torres, while at the end of the table, Singapore gallery owner Jasdeep Sandhu trades news with Indonesian artist Nyoman Masriadi...

Tucked away in Maui, on an eco-friendly farm, photographer David LaChapelle is recharging his batteries and going back to his roots. Celebrated for his high-octane, color-saturated portraits of stars including Madonna, Elton John, Britney Spears and Courtney Love among others, LaChapelle is synonymous with contemporary pop culture. But after two decades of photographing the brightest stars in entertainment and fashion, LaChapelle was burnt out, so he made the decision to retreat to a remote part of Maui.

There are many reasons why the art world is wary of religion. Partly, it’s a question of history. For most of the 20th century, art aligned itself with progressive, rational secularity and radical subjectivity; the ideas that have fed into art come from modern philosophy, liberal or radical politics, sociology and pop culture rather than theology. It’s also a question of finance: the money that funds art doesn’t come from churches or religious orders like it did hundreds of years ago. And then there’s ethics.

Drawing is the name of the game in "Tall Tales," a two-person show of works on paper by Kristofer Porter and Christopher Davison at Fred Torres Collaborations in New York. The two artists, who met at the University of Central Florida in 1997, face off with more than 100 individual drawings between them and dozens of additional works on paper that represent a challenge in which Porter and Davison have repeatedly responded to one another’s work over the past several months. In sheer numbers, Porter dominates...

2010 began on a dark note for artist Christopher Davison. His Disasters Are People Too series kicked off the year, and much like a poet or musician wearing his heart on his sleeve through words, Davison displayed his innermost feelings through strokes on canvas. The series was a reflection of the year 2009 — a difficult year of transformation of Davison. Through the black-and-white gouache paintings featuring dismembered, mangled body parts floating...

The new critically acclaimed Hole album, Nobody's Daughter, features artwork by Gretchen Ryan on the album sleeve. The work entitled Accident, features six young girls chained together walking off a cliff led by a white dove. Courtney Love, a long-time supporter of the artist specifically wanted this image included in the album artwork. Gretchen, a long-time fan of Hole and Courtney Love, was thrilled to be included in this collaboration between art and music.

Knock Knock: Who's There? That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore examines the delicate relationship between art and humor, and—it must be said straightaway—you won't find it a laugh a minute. But that's not the point. Sarah Murkett and Elana Rubinfeld who co-curated the show in two New York venues—Armand Bartos Fine Art and Fred Torres Collaborations—make it plain that the intention is to explore the various ways artists have used humor to address more serious issues. As such, the choices in the show are...

The drawings of Christopher Davison could keep you up at night—dark and visceral with narratives that flow freely from moments of striking metamorphosis. His series “End of Summer,” for example, depicts reclining figures entangled with their landscapes in ways both intimate and eerie: A figure births branches from his abdomen; a yellow woman is submerged in a landscape of organ-like plants. Born in a trailer in the small town of Gallipolis, Ohio, Davison started drawing as a child. His environments...

Gian Lorenzo Bernini's heirs are alive and well and working hard in Philadelphia. Artists like Christopher Davison at Jaskey/Tower and Hunter Stabler at Pageant Soloveev--each in their own way and both with contemporary techniques and subject matter--express the same high emotional content, drama and dark beauty as the great 17th-century practitioner of twist, swirl and angst. Hallmarks of the baroque are exquisite craftsmanship, ornate patterning, obsessive attention to detail and ecstatic...