Christopher Beane “Baroquecoco”

Christopher Beane “Baroquecoco”

Jim Kempner Fine Art

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Jim Kempner Fine Art presents Baroquecoco, a show of recent photographs and a site specific installation by Christopher Beane.

Baroquecoco is the next phase of Beane’s decades-long career of photographing the botanical. Beane’s extensive understanding of flowers fused with his unique approach towards the use of mixed media transforms how we see won- der in the natural. Acclaimed for his large-format intimate floral portraits, Baroquecoco is a departure from the singular Ranunculus Studies, erotic Floral Orgies, and Camouflaged Orchids of past bodies of work, and adventures into much more complex, sensuous, detailed, and layered compositions. Recontextualized floral bouquets of texture and color, floating within unique painted or collaged backdrops, create optical illusions of patterned, controlled chaos. Beane’s images call to mind the over-the-top decadence of the Baroque/Rococo era of Europe, reinterpreted for the 21st century.

These urban bouquets, set amidst graffiti-like gardens, explode in a celebration of beauty and vitality right before the viewer. Beane’s backgrounds have taken on a fresh, stylized boldness which imbue his large-scale photographs with a contemporary painterly quality. In August Zinnias Color Study 1 (Baroquecoco 2019), Beane’s layered collage swatches frame the floral focal point and are equally as satis- fying and as lush as the organic forms of the zinnias and dahlias. The flowers within each image become unique marks, as if painted within the space to compliment and contrast their vibrant surroundings. The compositions dance, seductively luring the viewer into a perishable, yet immortalized world, as seen through Beane’s eyes.

Beane’s work has been shown at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Museum Modern, Salzburg, Austria; the Maison Européeane de la Photographie, Paris, France; and is in the collection of Beth Rudin Dewoody, Virginia Dwan, and Art of the US consulate, Monterrey, Mexico. Beane is the author of Beane Flower, a monograph of his work created from 1994 - 2005, published by Artisan in 2008.

Media

• Photography
• Installation

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