Tiberius opening
by Maud Lemoine posted on February 15, 2009Being very excited about Chadwick Tyler’s first gallery exhibition,Tiberius, I’m pleased to share this quick view of the opening. What else to say that pictures may not tell you ? Models accepted Chadwick’s invitation and they made his day when he caught sight of many of their faces as they walked into the gallery !
" These girls have an ability to say so much with their expressions. I am just there to document it. Sure you prepare and try to anticipate but in the end you just have to wait for it "
The exhibition takes place in Honey Space Gallery in Chelsea where you can discover a series of original black and white photographic portraits depicting an array of expressive & sullenly beautiful female characters.
In Tiberius, Tyler juxtaposes the mystery and obscurity of the antiquated image with the clarity of deep emotion: transcendence, rage, ecstasy, hysteria, confusion, lethargy, exhaustion, lament, abjection, resignation, etc. The series is a sort of lexicon of unexplained broken beauty.
An intense sense of solitude underscores Tiberius. Mortality, evoked by the cinematic overhead lighting used throughout the series, seems always at the periphery; the subjects’ eyes are often turned upward, as if quite aware of their own vulnerability. The meticulous styling is suggestive of a broad range of historical social classes, but this is complicated by the disheveled appearance of even the most glamorous figures. Odd bodily contortions and nudity seem to indicate a loss of self-consciousness that further unsettles the work’s visual allusion to a more formal past.
Tiberius displays a looseness of interpretation and informality that allows for a scope of emotional representation extending beyond the work’s historical references. Raw emotional vulnerability, perhaps once seen as something to hide, here is the ultimate strength.








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