Skirts: Photographs by Heidi Lender and Sabine Dehnel

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Richard Levy Gallery is pleased to kick off 2012 with Skirts, a two person exhibition of artwork by Heidi Lender and Sabine Dehnel. In her two series Once Upon and Green Dress, Lender turns the lens on herself, creating playful self-portraits of varied lives, personas, and eras. Dehnel’s series Rock investigates variations on colors, patterns, and textures in a hybrid mix of photography and painting. Each of these photographers bring fresh twist to contemporary portraiture and suggested narrative in their chic playful portraits of headless women.

Heidi Lender’s series Once Upon is an in depth look into playing dress up in a pastiche of dress and style. What started out as a simple project, “stand on a bench and wear something pretty”, quickly took on a life of its own. Through careful use of clothing, props, sets, and accessories, Lender leads us through the decades. Lender’s dog Bubba, a timeless character, is present in most of the Once Upon images. In Green Dress the camera follows the narrative of an elegant woman in a garish vintage mint green frock, who lives in a bucolic setting. Lender combines her passion for clothing and photography, crafting intricate visual photographic compositions. She splits her time between Northern California and Garzon, Uruguay.

German photographer Sabine Dehnel takes a more conceptual approach and explores the space between photography and painting in her series Rock (German for skirt). In this project her constructed painted background and the pose of the model remain the same. Distinction comes from the skirt of the figure which varies within each image. The fabricated background and the model’s heavily painted skin read as a painting at first glance. Upon closer inspection, the detailing in the skirt and dimension in the figure reveal the photographic medium. Dehnel marries the concepts of photography and painting and finds the space between.

Images for Skirts can be found on our website at www.levygallery.com and are also are available on request.