Being 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of interpretation and informality that allows for a scope of emotional representation extending beyond the work’s historical references.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.