Gallerie Alex Daniels

In this rare artistic collaboration, the photographer Miles Aldridge invited contemporary painter Chantal Joffe to explore the theme of ‘the artist and model'. The resulting works in colour and black and white photographs, ink and pencil drawings and paintings in watercolour and oils create a fascinatingly obsessive and emotional study of one woman: the model Kristen McMenamy.

An impression of the opening: Kristen, As Seen by Miles Aldridge & Chantal Joffe from Dutch J den Hollander on Vimeo.

Aldridge is well known for high-gloss, high-drama images of women captured in pop colours. His work featured in the recent "Weird Beauty" Exhibition at The International Centre of Photography in New York, while his two 2009 solo in London and New York were heralded in international publications ranging from The New York Times to Art Review:

"In his acid-coloured images of lascivious lips, impossibly glossed models and hallucinogenic still lifes, photographer Miles Aldridge is plainly heir to some of the twentieth century's enduring pop culture visionaries." Art Review, April 2009
 
For this latest project Aldridge set out to create a study of one woman scrutinised by various media - the mechanical precision of the camera versus the painter's expressive brushstrokes. "I wanted a friction between the textures of painting, pencil and photography. I was excited by how that could look on a gallery wall," says Aldridge.
 
He immediately thought of London-based artist Chantal Joffe. "She uses paint properly and gives you that gory, painterly texture that I love - drippy, splattered and quite violent." In contrast to Aldridge's vision of women, Joffe's portraits offer an emotional, deeply human response to her subjects. In the introduction to the catalogue of her 2008 exhibition at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, Neal Brown wrote:

Joffe has a 'disorder' in the sense that, working within the often anti-intuitive context of contemporary art, she not only seeks the truth of human emotions, but does so with unfashionable compassion and humanity. Diligently, thoughtfully, she attends to the one thing that is of most visual interest to human beings and their visual artists: the face - or, perhaps we should say, to the emotions and feelings as the face reveals and expresses them.
 
Aldridge and Joffe worked in tandem in Joffe's East London studio, taking turns to lead and follow. While Joffe favoured softer, more traditional life-model positions, Aldridge encouraged Kristen to adopt a more erotic stance, characteristic of the photographic style for which he is famous.
 
Joffe's expressive works in oils and watercolours, which frequently drip, smudge and blur, capture Kristen at ease, in the contemplative mode of a life-model relaxing into a long pose; the accompanying black and white images taken by Aldridge during those sessions pay homage to that naturalism.

Aldridge's colour images of Kristen are highly charged - the artist's model turned femme fatale. Acid yellow and lurid violet replace the softer sorbet tones of Joffe's palette. The spiky immediate graphic works drawn by Joffe record that intensity of mood.
 
The 25 photographs by Aldridge and 15 works by Joffe on display create a remarkable and emotional document of one woman.

This is their first project together which has it’s premiere at
Galerie Alex Daniels in Amsterdam. The openings reception will be on March 13th from 5 – 7 pm. The exhibition will run through June 7 th.

For this exhibition a new book has been published by Reflex Editions Amsterdam : "Kristen", 64 pages, full colour, as well as a limited edition with prints by Chantal Joffe and photographs by Miles Aldridge (Edition of 60).