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Hedi Slimane's "Stage"
PARIS, September 11 - On a quiet, windy Saturday, as puffy cumulus clouds gradually boiled ominously black, an exhibition of Hedi Slimane's photography opened at the Galerie Almine Rech, located on a disparate street of the 13th Arrondissement. On the horizon, the four antiseptic towers of the Bibliothèque François Mitterand loom like beacons, but the sprinkling of ethnic grocery stores, dingy bars and rows of drab concrete-slab apartment buildings give the neighborhood a whiff of stark urban decay. In short, the unfashionable location is exactly where you might expect to find fashionable people in search of the avant-garde.

Hedi is full of contrast - a man who's keen eye for pop culture, rock concerts and street smart chic has greatly influenced his work, but whose natural inclination is always towards the aesthete. A man whose inspiration might be working class Berlinerweiss, but whose personal taste likely runs towards Veuve Cliquot.

So his projects outside of Dior Homme are particularly interesting, as they give the clearest glimpse of the designer dismantled from a luxury label. Among the first to arrive at today's vernissage was a contingency from LVMH, headed by Delphine Arnault, daughter of the millionaire financier and a key supporter of Slimane. As a cleaning lady washed and polished the front windows, the group looked over the exhibition, a joint project with American artist, James Turrell.

Hedi's photography, black and white images taken from his newly published book "Stage", as well as several unpublished shots, are displayed on four camera-looking devices mounted on black tripods and positioned before whitewashed walls. If there is an underlying theme, it is that Hedi's lens captures the energy of young men in motion. Un-posed and unrehearsed, the boys are caught shirtless and sweating, arms reaching out, celebrating and singing - a veritable tableau of joie de vivre. But there is a surrealistic quality in the darkness of the photography, as if a pervasive melancholy permeates each frame. Ephemeral beauty may flash one moment, before vanishing into shadowy mists the next. Hedi Slimane is a master of capturing that essence - the grace of light and darkness in play, and the resulting energy is what gives his work so much power.

Unadorned, un-manipulated, unframed, "Stage" tells us as much about the artist as it does the subjects in his view finder.

James Turrell + Hedi Slimane
September 11 - October 6
Galerie Almine Rech
127, rue du Chevaleret
75013 Paris

Tel: + 33 1 45 83 71 90

 




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