Charles Fréger “Wilder Mann”
The Gallery at Hermès
This event has ended.
Wilder Mann is the first of two exhibitions at The Gallery at Hermès exploring the theme of transformation through the lenses of two French photographers. Charles Fréger’s series is dedicated to costumes still celebrating the traditional ‘wild man’ in European communities today.
From Finland to Greece, Germany and Bulgaria, the ‘wild man’ is a traditional figure still honoured at rites celebrating the changing seasons, fertility, life or death. Communities across Europe have their own, distinctive costumes, combining local furs, vegetation and other attributes. In 2010 and 2011, Charles Fréger set about photographing a catalogue of these figures in eighteen different European countries. The Wilder Mann series is the result.
Fréger – a graduate of the Beaux-Arts (Rouen) and an experienced photographer of classical, often uniformed, group portraits – takes an anthropological approach to the continuing tradition of the Wild Man in central Europe. The series explores the costumes’ metamorphic qualities and mythological aspect, highlighting their role in primitive rituals closely connected to the landscape.
Exhibition curator Cory Jacobs says the series explores ‘man’s desire to be both individual and unique, and part of a wider collective identity.’
Charles Fréger’s work has been widely exhibited in Europe, notably at Hermès’s TH13 gallery in Bern. The Gallery at Hermès is his first US exhibition, taking a fresh look at the series, with a new selection of images including large-scale prints and portfolio pictures. The event is accompanied by a parallel show at the Yossi Milo Galery, in Chelsea. A book of the Wilder Mann series is published by Thames & Hudson.
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Schedule
from April 12, 2013 to June 08, 2013