The essentials:
Exhibit: Hellen van Meene's New Work
Gallery: Yancey Richardson Gallery
Location: 535 West 22nd Street, 3rd floor, NYC
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM.
Exhibit closes: March 17, 2007
If you've ever flipped through the pages of Vogue or some other silly-but-addictive upscale fashion magazine and thought the photo spreads were worthy to be called art, you'll love Hellen van Meene's new work at Yancey Richardson Gallery. What at first looks like stunning fashion photographs are actually captivating portraits of preadolescents...minus any Jon Benet creepiness.
"I look for a certain mood in which the girls almost figure as actors," van Meene once said. Whimsical appears to be the mood for many of the girls. Dressed in white and positioned in natural settings, the little darlings with gorgeous hair easily resemble wood nymphs. The idealized portraits of youth make it hard to believe these are normal kids in their everyday environment:
Having previously worked with models she knew, van Meene’s recent work was made with strangers, primarily in their own environments: students at their school in St. Petersburg, teenage mothers at home in London, Tokyo youth on the street, and girls in a village plaza in Morocco.
Each of van Meene’s photographs is so thought-provoking that it transcends fashion photography for in-depth feature story, so it comes as no surprise then that the photographs are available in book format, Hellen Van Meene: New Work. You can languish over forty-one pages of cherub faces, envisioning the everyday lives of these introspective children. The photographs, some of which overlap with those in the gallery, were taken on van Meene's travels to England, Latvia, Russia, and Japan.
The exhibit at Yancey Richardson Gallery is the Holland-born artist's first Stateside show since 2001. Right on its heels, comes van Meene's involvement in the Family Pictures exhibit currently on display at the Guggenhheim.
