Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

Renek Gaszewski’s Studio presents the works of fashion photographer Paolo Roversi in its gallery showrooms. For over 35 years, Paolo Roversi, born in Ravenna, Italy, in 1947, has been working and living in Paris. The exhibition of around 50 photographs will show, beyond the series Guinivere and Nudi, pictures of the studio of the artist in Paris, portraits, as well as works of his lightpaintings. Owing to the well-balanced quality of colors and the clear composition of the photographs of the artist as well as the particular charm and grace of his models, the observer of these photographs is often tempted to study them more as paintings. This effect is also a result of the technique of the artist.
Since 1980 Roversi takes pictures with a 8×10 inch polaroid camera. The prints obtain their distinctive appearance through faded shades of skin color, as can, for example, be seen in the series Guinivere. Over the period of twelve years Roversi accompanied his muse of the same name with the camera in this long-term study. As a result, a mixture of abstract forms of graphic character and very intimate studies was generated. Whether the model is dressed or naked the photographs of Guinivere are unconventional and often provocative portraits.
The series Nudi is marked by a clear composition. The observer sees naked women in full-length portraits which seem to transparently merge into the white picture background. The ladies displayed in the exhibition are top models such as Kate Moss and Tatjana Patiz. This is not the primary interest of the artist. In the book Nudi, the models are simply called by their first name, and they are photographed entirely without requisites or clothing. Thus Roversi maintains the anonymity of the displayed and shows us delicate, in their purity almost heaven-like creatures and not the stars of the fashion scene.
Roversi’s photographs are full of poetry and reflect, in all its facets, the beauty of the female body. The photographs show the artist’s ability not to lapse into superficial aestheticism but to always bestow upon his pictures a subtle aura of the enigmatic and mysterious. Particularly his technique of lightpainting, for which he illuminates the model which is standing in the dark and thus in a way traces it, makes Roversi a traveler between the worlds of photography and painting in the true tradition of the pioneers of artistic photography - the pictorialists. Around the year 1900 artists such as Alvin Langdon Coburn and Edward Steichen began to give photography a pictorial character by using soft-focus, special printing techniques, and complex light installations.
Paolo Roversi’s works have been published in various monographs, among them the lavishly arranged books Nudi (edition Stromboli, Paris: 1999), Libretto (Steidl, Göttingen:2000), and Studio (Steidl, Göttingen and edition Stromboli, Paris:2002). Paolo Roversi was the photographer for campaigns such as Cerruti, Comme des Garçons, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, Valentino, as well as editorials for magazines such as Arena, Harper’s Bazaar, I-D, Interview, Marie-Claire, The New York Times Magazine, Italian and British Vogue, L’Uomo Vogue, and W.

In their hundreds, they line up to take off their clothes - all in the name of art.
In the latest of a series of what one might call “strip-art” ventures, about 500 volunteers undressed on a cold and wet Sunday for an installation by New York-born artist Spencer Tunick.
A mostly young crowd posed on escalators at London’s Selfridges department store as well as in various parts of the store before the shop opened to the public.
Earlier this month, 160 volunteers took part in a “nude happening” run by the same artist to launch London’s Saatchi Gallery.
Tunick has held similar naked installations at outdoor venues in Montreal, Canada, and Sao Paolo, Brazil - attracting thousands of participants.
And the clearly willing participation of several hundred Britons in his UK installations is just one example of a trend that is putting paid to the image of the famous British, erm, stiff upper lip - despite the country’s off-putting weather.
Of course, the idea of stripping naked for art is hardly new, as many an art class life model can testify.
But mass nudity has become quite the fashion.
In February, 240 volunteers aged five to 95 agreed to be wrapped in cling film to allow plaster casts to be made of their bodies for an exhibition by sculptor Antony Gormley.
Their figures will form Gormley’s latest exhibition, Domain Field, which opens at the Baltic Arts Centre in Gateshead in May.
One of the volunteers, Paul O’Neill, said he was surprised at how normal the experience felt.
He said: “I had my doubts about whether I could go through with it but there was a definite moment of no return.
“Once I had passed it I had a wonderful - if slightly surreal - afternoon.”
Fellow volunteer Davie Hay said: “I found the experience very interesting, humorous, humbling, calming and something that I’m proud to have taken part in.”
Peter Wilson said he wanted the opportunity to take part in a large art project.
“I was hooked to the idea straight away and applied instantly,” he said.
“The casting itself was unusual, but a thoroughly relaxing and enjoyable experience.”
Tunick is becoming famous around the world for his series of installations photographing nude crowds in urban landscapes.
Bodies are composed into sculptural shapes and bizarre formations to feature on buildings, streets and cityscapes.
Mike Grenville, 53, who took part in the Saatchi event, said it had been a relaxed and positive experience.
He said: “It was just curiosity. I was interested to see how Tunick handled it and what people were there.
“We’re all basically the same in different shapes and sizes. Once you have taken all your clothes off, it’s a very friendly and communal feeling.”
But Ivan Massow, the former chairman of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, said Tunick’s Selfridges installation upset him because it was “so transient, it disappears, it is pure idea“.
He posed for two naked portraits because he wanted “to prove that concept or conceptual thought could meet canvas, something tangible”, he said.
The Selfridges event was a departure for Tunick, as he swapped the open air for the interior of the store.
He told the BBC: “Usually people do it outdoors because there is an amount of tension and vulnerability in the body that comes up against the concrete world.
“That tension creates a desire to be nude in a public place outside.
“I’m just happy that people wanted to engage in indoor space.”