Salzburg_ at Villa Kanst; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac: Robert Mapplethorpe, curated by Isabelle Huppert
by Venetia Kapernekas
August 31, 2013-January 11, 2014
photo: courtesy of Ropac gallery
A lovely visit at Ropac gallery-Villa Kanst and private tour of the exhibition by the director of the gallery, Dr Arne Ehmann
“….. The gallery has invited French actress Isabelle Huppert to curate the exhibition. This is the latest in a series of exhibitions devoted to Robert Mapplethorpe that have been curated by artists such as Cindy Sherman, David Hockney, theatre director Bob Wilson and, in 2011, film director Sofia Coppola. The idea is to offer the public a different and more personal take on his work…..
...Naturally affected by beauty, Isabelle Huppert’s selection of these often unexplored images creates a poetic atmosphere of mysterious softness.
As Isabelle Huppert herself admitted, “I look at each Robert Mapplethorpe photo as if I were reading a poem. In the ones I have chosen, his way of seeing the world is pent with softness – and silence. They are silent photos. In that particular world that he made his own, everything is connected. He blurred the frontiers, merged the mobile and the immobile. His flowers are alive, almost human, and his bodies are frozen in their eternal beauty. Each photo is pure emotion. In each one of them there is a perfection of form, the delicacy and mystery of light and shade. Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer poet.” (gallery press release)
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