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Barry Morse:
a Los Angeles visual artist/performer/filmmaker/hair & makeup artist.
Martin Levinne: Czech-born photographer and art director. When the two
met, they mined their collective consciousness to create these Òportrait
sittingsÓ of figures from our not-so-distant past.
ItÕs not so much
about how they looked; itÕs much more about how we know them ÐÐ although the success of a parody
lies in selective (emphasis on selective) accuracy. Jesus, for instance, probably was
not on a high-protein diet nor had lifted weights (except for that
120-pound wooden cross). But the other side of our brain knows the dime-store Jesus with the swimmerÕs body.
Valentino the movie star was born in drag ÐÐ sheik drag ÐÐ which had in
turn been shaped by the 19th-century Orientalia and
HollywoodÕs never-ending desire to marry one exotica with another to
create a new kind of myth. And the new demigods and demons of our time ÐÐ Paul Stanley, Gandhi, Saddam, Kafka, Frida, La LizÉwhat
do we know about them?
Morse and Levinne
(self-) consciously toe the line between parody and tribute, and what we
see in these faces could very well be reflections of our selves.
ÐÐ Rika
Ohara
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© 2008-2010 Martin Levinne
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