Natacha Barbieri Project 1
The XYZ portfolio show located at the LACMA museum is an exquisite representation of the iconic photographer Mapplethorpe. With his over the top sadomasochistic imagery created a change in the way we argue what kind of photography should be in a museum. The forbidden underground community Mapplethorpe photographs is the most post-modernistic work you can find at any museum. The way he uses the images to challenge the traditional way of utilizing the medium of photography. Touching in the subject of black male, and adding the homosexual factor too it is a controversy on its own. But it doesn’t stop there; it goes into more detail of the homosexuality activities that are created to make the viewer notice that ‘the other’ exists. The xyz is a symbol of the new generation the other ‘the xyz’ chromosomes which goes against the standard XX and the YX of the history of humanity, metaphorically speaking. As you walk in there is a disclaimer on the wall outside warning the audiences of the content of this work. It is located inside a red room with 4 walls. The first wall has exerts and texts representing the xyz sets of photography written by different authors. In each set of images there is a letter representing them. The sadomasochistic community represents the letter ‘X’. In this area everything and anyone that is being aroused by pain, falls under this category, the voyeuristic view. Within ‘X’ there are images of people being obstructed, chained, and painfully taking actions that no human being in the right mind would find pleasure into taking. Under the ‘X’ images ‘Y’ images are arranged mostly with different still lives of plants and flowers representing either the genital or the reproductive organ. Finally ‘Z’ set of images is a range of male sex organs which are being idolized as if they were gods of the homosexual community and who are also confronting the viewer by looking directly at the camera. Mapplethorpe is proposing a ‘religion’ of challenging the default setting of the America today. Mapplethorpe comments of deconstructing the American ideal values and positions on how the ‘default’ portion of America views the sadomasochistic society. Mapplethorpe creates the liberty for each subject that is being depicted by presenting the issue and letting the viewer decide whether it is acceptable or not.
Saturday, March 23, 2013 | 6:30 pm
To mark the final days of the exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe: XYZ, LACMA presents the landmark projection that was shown on the exterior wall of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in June 1989. This important event was organized by a group of Washington, D.C. curators and artists, Bill Wooby and Andrea Pollan chief among them, to protest the Corcoran's shuttering of the Mapplethorpe retrospective The Perfect Moment. Beginning and ending with a self-portrait, the projection was a spectral reminder of the artist, who had died only a few months previously from complications of AIDS. This event celebrates the joint acquisition in 2011 of the Robert Mapplethorpe Archive by LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum and highlights Mapplethorpe's importance to the museum and to Los Angeles, where his immense archive and impressive collection of works of art has come to rest. Ahmanson Building, Plaza Level | Free, no reservations enjoy