A more sedate exhibition than I’ve seen at Honey Space but the work is beautiful.
-e

Honey Space
146 11t5h Ave. (btw 21st & 22nd)
Gallery hours: Tues-Sat 11-6

Honey Space is pleased to present Tiberius, an exhibition of new photography by Chadwick Tyler. For his first gallery exhibition, Tyler has created a series of large-format black & white photographic portraits depicting an array of stylized female characters in a bleak and solitary space. With a cast of fifty-two models, including several of the most recognizable faces in contemporary high fashion, alongside unknown girls, models who had major careers in the 90’s, and one man in drag, Tiberius invokes the conventions of classic portraiture and cinematic representations of the tragic heroine, filtered through an individual approach that renders the classic and antiquated fresh and contemporary. With strong visual references to looks spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and informed by the pictorial aesthetics of that era, ranging from amateur and classical portraiture to Dorothea Lange’s Dust Bowl imagery, Tiberius is built upon an uneasy suspension of rarified beauty and grimy dejection. Beyond superficial qualities, what rises to the surface in each of these images is a state of being: transcendence, rage, ecstasy, hysteria, confusion, lethargy, exhaustion, lament, abjection, resignation. Emerging from the series as a whole is a sort of lexicon of unexplained broken beauty.

For the images in Tiberius, Tyler shot each model in the same dirty, outdoor space, with stark and consistent overhead lighting. An intense sense of solitude underscores the images, and mortality, suggested by the overhead light, seems always to be stalking from the periphery of the frames. As Tyler created Tiberius, the incidental remnants of each shoot were left for the next, so that over time the setting of the images itself evidenced a memory of the story he was composing. Most significantly, this recessive space provided a context where Tyler and the models could interact without preconditions: through emotional openness with his subject rather than direction, he allows the resultant qualities of being to emerge from within the models, rather than through enforced representation. This improvised approach, and Tyler’s ability to draw out qualities of being from his models, are among his signature achievements.

The images in Tiberius, ranging in size from 3″ x 5″ to 4′ by 6′, are printed on archival cotton rag paper and presented in antique, gilded frames hand-painted by the artist. The gallery has been transformed for the exhibition, with the images hung in a classical salon-style in a clean, sanctified space. After passing through a low, stooped entryway, viewers enter an interior space that opens and expands, creating the sensation of both an intimate, private realm, while maintaining the gallery’s condition as an extension of the public space. As a viewer stands in this room, the conditions of time and location are shifted, framing this story of indefinite origin.

Chadwick Tyler (b. 1975) was raised in the small town of Valrico, Florida, and held brief careers in art direction and corporate advertising before turning to women’s fashion photography in 2005. His images have since appeared in long list of well-known magazines, including: V, Exit, Tank, The Last Magazine, Joy Quarterly, Plastique, Qvest, Mirage, Elle & Nylon. Chadwick Tyler currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Tiberius is his first gallery exhibition.

for additional information and images, please contact info@honey-space.com