Ben fink shapiro: Slippery when wet
OPENING: Wednesday, May 3, from 6 to 9 pM
160 West Broadway, NYC
A+E Studios is pleased to present Ben Fink Shapiro: Slippery When Wet, an exhibition of photographs that span the artists career, featuring many never before seen images. Slippery When Wet is Shapiro's first-ever solo exhibition in New York.
Ben Fink Shapiro (b. 1985) has found success working across the fields of art, fashion, and portraiture. A skilled visual storyteller and provocateur, he relies on a combination of careful direction and serendipity to stage his nudes and landscapes, as well as a variety of character studies and sexually ambiguous moments. Slippery When Wet, which features alluring women and seductive landscapes, could be seen as an exhibition about beauty, or a dream of beauty, with figures set in sculptural relief against the background of sand and crashing waves. But beneath the surface there is a tension in the flickering between reality and dream, as beauty and desire slip from the physical to the imaginary.
These sensually textured images of the female form and the ocean encompass the dual nature of physical desire, or, to put it in Lacanian terms: jouissance. In a perpetual striving for that which lies just out of reach, desire can be measured by margins of dissatisfaction, as tantalizingly elusive as a receding horizon. Much like surfers chasing the next big wave, or the cyclical highs and lows of sexual passion, the picturing of the ocean and women suggests a symbolic reality that parallels and sometimes overtakes the physical one. The consistent searching for such, well, slippery experiences brings a realization that these moments and representations are just within our reach yet simultaneously drifting in the other direction. Beauty is fleeting, and so too is pleasure, yet we can’t seem to stop ourselves from desiring both.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Based in New York City and East Hampton, Ben Fink Shapiro was born in Cincinnati, where he began shooting as a teenager. After graduating from Vassar College with a B.A. in Film/Media Studies, he assisted fashion photographers Miles Aldridge and Kenneth Willardt, and established himself with work published in American Vogue, British Vogue, Korean Vogue, Hamptons, and Elle. Commercial clients include Brunello Cucinelli, Le Parker Meridien Hotel, Parker Palm Springs, Vbeauté, Edie Parker, SAM., Maybelline NY, and Christie’s Auction House. His independent art photography received a solo exhibition at the Mark Humphrey Gallery in Southampton (2015), and has been shown at Tenet East Hampton and Southampton (2015-present), as well as several New York Public Art Fund benefit auctions.