Continuing through April 7, 2012
Lise Sarfati is well known in Paris and abroad for her series dealing with women's identity - sexual and otherwise. On view are photos from the artist's series called "on Hollywood," comprised of portraits of women - both at once lovely and utterly abject - taken in and around Hollywood. "Malaika," in her bleached blond bob, puffy eyes looks beyond us, a bagged bottle in hand. "Dana" stands before a broken down theater, tattooed, in grotesquely high heels, a caricature of the dominatrix type.
These are scenes anyone from L.A. is more than familiar with, as life and as art. The spectacle of Hollywood has been addressed by everyone from Robert Frank to Philip-Lorca diCorica. But Sarfati has a way of delivering these subjects with the flat-footed authenticity we find in William Eggleston. Her subjects seem aware of us, weirdly empowered by our relentless visual fascination but then in some way sullied by the exchange.
Published courtesy of ArtSceneCal ©2012
