Les Helmers “The Absolute Gap”

Skoto Gallery

[Image: Les Helmers "The Absolute Gap Smoke" (2009) oil on linen and c-print on aluminum, 106x60 in.]

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Skoto gallery presents an exhibition by Les Helmers, the Absolute Gap. His art embraces a dualistic approach of an inclusiveness that is “both/and” versus the divisive perspective of “either/or.” Helmers has visually expressed the Gap in various forms as the thing that is natural within us. He believes that there is no conceptual self within oneself. The subject of this show is how Helmers arrived at his position.

Helmers was born in Holland in 1958, and grew up in a multi-cultural environment. He lived in Holland, Canada, United States and West Africa before he turned twelve, and became fluent in three languages. Even though Helmers spoke these multiple languages he believed that there had to be some unifying concept within the self that could be expressed. In 1979, the 21-year-old Helmers traveled around Mexico and the United States taking pictures with an old Nikon F; determined to get to the bottom of what constitutes a self. By 1981 his travels led him to New York City where he attended the School of Visual Arts. He fell in love with the melting pot of ideas that encompasses the city; it is around this time Helmers started photographing the images that are part of his book “Portrait of Myself as a Young New Yorker.” In 1983, he photographed the diptych image of his hand with another image of a copper arm that was part of a sculpture in Central Park. This photograph was the pivotal moment that Helmers realized that his Truth withdrew into the Abyss. An avid reader of Sartre and other continental philosophers, Helmers believed that there could be no bedrock of the soul.

The challenge for the artist was not thinking the impossible, but figuring the impossible. From the very beginning Helmers used a sense of humor in his writings and mixed media hybrid paintings to express the irreducible nature of our existence. He switched cameras ranging from a 35mm SLR to an 8x10 Deardorff. When the AIDs epidemic unfolded, he turned his camera toward a more serious topic and photographed people with HIV/AIDS in the middle of their crises. The artist sees the Gap between Earth and World known as climate change as the existential threat of the 21st century. In the end, Helmers embraces the mystery of our existence without any irony or mysticism. The exhibition draws on his combined body of work of over 35 years including hybrid paintings, photography, and photography books.

Helmers has had many shows in New York City featuring his AIDs work, his portrait photography, and the publication of his photography books. This is the first show Helmers will feature the Absolute Gap. We believe he has given a visual language to figuring the impossible.

Exhibition-Related Program
The artist will be discussing the Absolute Gap with the philosopher Simon Critchley on November 18th, 4pm at the gallery. Simon Critchley is the moderator and frequent contributor to the Stone section in the New York Times. He is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of the recently published “What We Think About When We Think About Soccer”, by Penguin Books. You are all cordially invited.