Objet Trouvé: Jerry Shevick's Amazing Nudie Pin-Up Show
What looks like the faded slides of one prolific, if amateur photographer, is really Shevick's heavily curated pickings of found objects in the photo sections of flea markets and estate sales. Opens June 22 at Artist's Corner.
At the nexus where vintage photography meets pictorialism, photo artist Jerry Shevick has staked out a new territory that somehow seems sweetly nostalgic and oddly familiar. A remembered color palette from a time we think we know, seeds this artist's body of work. On the hunt in thrift shops and garage sales for 40's 50's and 60's amateur pin up shots, Shevick has put together a coy vision of a time gone by when your grandfather would fumble with his Brownie and your grandmother would don a six-shooter and strike a pose in the backyard.
Fifty years ago or so, these twelve women, who were wives, girlfriends, or hopeful starlets took there clothes off and posed naked, maybe for the very first time. These old nudie shots hint of a life of love and lust.
What looks like the faded slides of one prolific, if amateur photographer, is really Shevick's heavily curated pickings of found objects in the photo sections of flea markets and estate sales that he's culled and rephotographed in a fresh, innovative way. The result is a re-framing of the entire experience in a campy, post modern, tongue and cheek show. Printed on Kodak Metallic photographic paper, and finished in plexiglass, Shevick's prints firmly plant these images in a highly contemporary re-imagining of a time, long gone bye.
These photographs are old conversations; sweet, sexual whispers in an anachronistic language we don’t speak anymore - they evoke photography in its simplest, most utilitarian form – a private communication, one the artist is allowing us to share.
Phil Tarley is a Fellow of The American Film Institute and an artist member of the Los Angeles Art Association. He posts regular stories on The WOW Report as its art and pop culture critic and writes about art and photography for Fabrik Magazine. He is currently working on a book of narrative non-fiction travel stories and a variety of art projects.
Review from Artweek.LA http://artweek.la/issue/june-17-2013/article/objet-trouve-jerry-shevicks-s-amazing-nudie-pin-up-show