Wrinkles of the City - Los Angeles, The - Hardcover

JR; Louise Berrebi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8888493905 ISBN 13: 9788888493909

Publisher: Drago, 2013

Synopsis

JR is back with the next installment of his world wide project The Wrinkles of the City. This time the visionary artist has chosen to focus on the people of Los Angeles; is it really as superficial as the media paints it?

"JR knows how to hold up a mirror to a community. In the home of the moving image, he has used his still photographs stunningly magnified and arrestingly positioned to prompt profound questions about what a meaningful life entails." Jane Rosenthal, writing in the Introduction.

This is JR's way of reminding us that we are all witnesses to the triumphs and outrages of our generation. As he photographs his subjects, he listens to their fascinating life stories and immortalizes the only witnesses left of the past. Los Angeles is where the Hollywood myth was born, where glamour and beauty has come to define the city. For this project, JR juxtaposes the imperfection and meaning held in the wrinkles of the elderly with the image of perfection and regenerated beauty that has become a hallmark of the 21st century.

The 2011 TED prize winner, born in 1983, started off as a graffiti artist but turned to photography after finding a camera in a Paris metro station. Since then he has gone on to undertake a variety of projects using the side of buildings and other structures as his gallery. Heading back to his native country earlier this year, the artist chose to cover the famous Louvre Pyramid in one of his black and white photographs. The photographer recently also turned his own talents to directing the short film 'ELLIS'. The narrative, starring Robert de Niro, centers around JR's own unframed art on Ellis Island and the forgotten story of the immigrants who built America.

About this title

Product Description:

JR's triumphal march through the world goes on in an effort to create a new way of connecting the streets with the system. For the first time in the heart of America, in the City of the Angels, JR's unique way of operating devastates the mecca of youth and the unofficial embassy of the American culture conquering the streets bringing hope and love for a new era. Each large-scale photo mural has its own history and reason to be there.

About the Author:

JR owns the biggest art gallery in the world. He exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit. After he found a camera in the Paris subway, he did a tour of European Street Art, tracking the people who communicate messages via the walls. Then, he started to work on the vertical limits, watching the people and the passage of life from the forbidden undergrounds and roofs of Paris. In 2006, he achieved Portrait of a Generation, portraits of the suburban thugs that he posted, in huge formats, in the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became official when the Paris City Hall wrapped its building with JR s photos. In 2007, with Marco, he did Face 2 Face, the biggest illegal exhibition ever. JR posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on the both sides of the Security fence / Separation wall. The experts said it would be impossible. Still, he did it. In 2008, he embarked for a long international trip for Women Are Heroes, a project in which he underlines the dignity of women who are often the targets of conflicts. At the same time, he creates up the project The Wrinkles of the City. These actions aim to show through theirs wrinkles, the inhabitants of a city, the history and memory of a country. The artist chose the cities that have experienced changes such as Cartagena in Spain, Shanghai or Los Angeles. In 2010, his film Women Are Heroes is presented at Cannes in competition for the Camera d Or. In 2011, he received the Ted Prize, which offers him the opportunity to make A wish to change the world . He creates InsideOut, an international participatory art project that allows people worldwide to get their picture and paste it to support an idea, a project, an action and share their experience. JR creates Pervasive Art that spreads uninvited on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle-East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil. People who often live with the bare minimum discover something absolutely unnecessary. And they don t just see it, they make it. Some elderly women become models for a day; some kids turn artists for a week. In that Art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators. After these local exhibitions, the images are transported to London, New York, Berlin or Amsterdam where people interpret them in the light of their own personal experience. As he remains anonymous and doesn t explain his huge full frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/interpreter. This is what JR s work is about - raising questions

About this edition

• Publisher: Drago
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 8888493905
• ISBN 13: 9788888493909
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 140