Artists Corner Gallery is pleased to present Eric Stampfli’s photographic exhibition STILL, curated by Phil Tarley. The show opens October 17 and runs through November 21, 2015.
In 1928, Georgia O’Keeffe painted enormous orange poppies. “If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it,” she said, “no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself –I’ll paint it big…and they will be surprised.”
Now comes Eric Stampfli’s blossoms, adding new, fecund dimensions to what O’Keefe designed. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Oriental Poppies are monumental: Flower Power at its most intense. Stampfli’s florid-torrid mix of passion, color and gigantism makes an even bigger, even more sensual statement. ( Stampfli’s prints are 32 x 48 inches and 44 x 66 inches). Size, color and vastness make us one with his flowers; make us feel the flower’s flowerness. Freezing his favorite blooms in hefty blocks of ice, Stampfli quickly positions them into a highly articulated studio lighting setup. He captures them dripping with shades of colors we have never seen before. As the ice melts, it reflects, refracts, and adds different degrees of transparency and opacity. Sometimes the posies look like Impressionist paintings, as if the flower is hiding under the petticoats of a Degas ballerina. Other times, they are frozen in delicious icicles, wet with color.
Giant plants and flowers are fantasies that pop up in legends and fairytales the world over. Here, in STILL, Stampfli’s fabled blossoms are meta-flowers; larger and more outlandish than any flower ought to be. They deliberately provoke conversations about the state of being a huge, luscious flower and their meaty carnality incarnates the mythic sexual functionality of flowers in brilliantly colored, wonderfully illuminated ways. STILL captures a deep, exuberant joy in a simple blossoming of elegant expression.
These images reside in a Stampfli mega-space. His photographs exist without an up or down; they seem to float and move in any orientation because no horizontal or vertical plane can contain them. Ultimately, Stampfli’s preoccupation with sensuality makes him a hedonic voluptuary, embedding his fleshy photographs in clear, icy Plexiglas so they hover on the gallery walls like gorgeous glossy jewels.
A happening space celebrating creativity, Artists Corner Gallery is located at 6585 Santa Monica Boulevard, just east of Seward Street Hollywood, 90038. Parking is on site and there is also street parking. Both opening and closing nights will have receptions from 7pm to 10 am. Admission is free. Refreshments will be served. Please RSVP by e-mail at Gallery@ArtistsCorner.US
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