Kate Moss Prints by Chuck Close

On May 31st, 2007, Christie's London will auction a set of six Kate Moss prints by Chuck Close printed and published by Adamson Editions, Washington, DC.

Yuka Yamaji, head of photography for the auction house, called Moss "a cultural icon and arguably the most influential model of our day."

Adamson Editions published the series of six pigment print images of model Kate Moss, in an edition of 25 prints in 2005. The images were shown for the first time at Adamson Gallery, as part of an exhibition of Close's work, entitled "A Couple of Ways of Doing Something." The Kate Moss prints were also exhibited at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and the SungKok Art Museum in Seoul, Korea. The prints were featured in the Steidl publication Adamson Atelier that accompanied the traveling exhibition.

Originally commissioned for a special edition of W Magazine, the images show Moss not as the subject of a fashion pictorial, but as an artist's model. Close's daguerreotypic method reveals and exaggerates the aesthetic imperfections of his subjects, in the case of Moss, an iconoclastic beauty, the effect is that of a portrait not of a mannequin, but of a woman. In the same way that typical images of Moss downplay her flaws, Close's images underscore them. Freckles, lines, and curves that are typically hidden in the milieu of fashion photography are revealed here, resulting in strong images that call into question ideals of aesthetics, icons and portraiture.

Chuck Close is one of the most important and influential American artists of the last century. Since the late 1960's, he has been changing our impressions and expectations of portraiture as a form of representation and expression. Taking a format that has arguably been present as long as art itself, Close has imbued it with new and ever shifting ideologies. Over a career that has spanned more than thirty years, Close has exhibited works at major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Tate in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

For additional information, please contact Adamson Gallery at gallery@adamsongallery.com, or at
(202) 232 0707.

1515 fourteenth street nw / suite 202 / washington dc 20005
t 202.232.0707 / f 202.232.2660
www.adamsongallery.com