INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE: DAVID LACHAPELLE
FEBRUARY 21-22, 2009
Arts Guide

More than 10 years ago, Richard Avedon said in an interview that David LaChapelle could become the Magritte of photography. The iconoclastic photographs are displayed in historical buildings in Paris and Mexico City.

• La Monnaie de Paris.
To May 31 : " David LaChapelle". The 18th-century institution, whose mission is to issue and protect the French currency, is the temporary home to 200 works by the American photographer (b.1968). The gaudy photographs play on eroticism and religion, hyperrealism and surrealism, current events and history, apocalypse and redemption, leaving the viewer sometimes amused, always mystified. Portraits of celebrities, as well as re-created scene such as "Museum", "Cathedral" and "Deluge" fill the stuccoed chambers. "Auguries of innocence", LaChapelle's latest series of pop-up murals, celebrate or possibly mock our societies.
www.monnaiedeparis.fr

• Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso.
To June 14 : "David LaChapelle - Delirios de Razón/Delirium of Reason."
The 16th-century frescoed building, San Ildefonso, displays 64 surreal photographs and offers 12 musical videos directed by LaChapelle, as well as two films that detail the mysteries of works' genesis and installation. The staged photos, "Cathedral," "Deluge" and others are on display here too, www.sanildefonso.org.mix.