Juergen Teller at Maupin Gallery

Paradis by Juergen Teller

Maupin Gallery

540 W. 26th Street

I've never really been a fan of Juergen Teller's work. Not unlike how I feel about Jill Greenberg's work, I find that the photographer's style--that amateur flash wash-out--has become too much of a gimmick that I can't see past and that I have trouble connecting/relating to the subject. After a while I've started to feel that I've seen them all after having seen one. (Though at least Jill Greenberg's work can be humorous.) That said, I'm always up for checking out the cross-section between the commercial art world--especially fashion photography--and the fine art world, so when I heard Teller was having a show in Chelsea, I had to check it out. And, well, the photographs were probably the most interesting that I've seen from him in a while (how much my low expectations contributed to that, I can't say).

Most interesting to me, after reading Groys's 'On the New,' was how the museum space, under Teller's flash and with his figure composition (nudes casually lounging around artworks), ceases to become that vacuum partitioned from the "real world" (to preserve unique works, to re-present the profane and mundane as unique works, blah blah, etc.). The museum presentation lighting is washed out. The models stand within the guard rails (naked, no less) intended to protect the works. The space becomes just another personal, intimate place where we go about our business--and in this case, be naked.

And then there's the juxtaposition of nude, recognizable subjects with old masterpieces of art (particularly nude sculptures and the Mona Lisa). Pretty cool, I guess.

Then there was also the occasional shot of a painting or sculpture, subjected to Teller's flash, without the model and framed closely in on just the exhibited work. These seems to further show the effect of his "amateur style" on the clean, formal and public space that is a museum, but as individual images, I don't think they'd be so interesting if Teller's visual style--that flattening orb of light--hadn't become something of an icon of its own. Though I guess there's something to be said about that.