DORIS KLOSTER
New Paintings
June 7 through July 11, 1997
Jessica Fredericks Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new photographs by DORIS KLOSTER. Ms. Kloster’s photographs have been reproduced widely. Her work is included in the exhibition catalogue Feminimasculin, le sex de l’art, Centre Georges Pompidou, and in 1995, TASCHEN published the book entitled Doris Kloster.
In her new body of work. Ms. Kloster uses her own face and body (altered and enhanced with masks, wigs and imitation body parts) to highlight the distortion inherent in images of media-perfect beauty. This new direction relates to aspects of her earlier photographs of dominatrixes, ritual enactments and age-play scenarios. Here too, conventional ideas about aesthetics and sexuality are the foundation for pictures involving elaborately theatrical situations where elements of tragedy and comedy force familiarity into the realm of the bizarre.
Having recently lived in Venice, Italy for six months, Ms. Kloster was influenced by the city’s carnivale tradition of using costumes and masks to take on new identities or simply conceal one’s own. It is in this tradition that the photographs celebrate artifice.
Jessica Fredericks Gallery is located at 504 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Gallery hours have changed. Please note that the gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm.. For further information and/or photographs please contact the gallery by telephone at (212) 633-6555 or fax at (212) 367-9502.