FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:


Regen Projects
629 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424
Fax. (310) 276-7430




CATHERINE OPIE: “PORTRAITS”
4 June - 2 July 1994
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-5





Regen Projects is pleased to present Catherine Opie’s “Portraits.” The exhibit will consist of a number of Opie’s chromogenic prints, including the debut of her most recent 40” x 30” and 60” x 30” full-figure portraits.

Opie’s portraits chronicle her friends, acquaintances, and self--an assemblage which converges from various subcultures--managing to transgress all boundaries of gender and desire. Butch women, drag queens, practitioners of scarification, FTM, body-manipulation and/or S/M, Opie’s portraits convey “Queer” as not only proud but irresistibly beautiful.

Photographed on bright backdrops, extremely formal in their pose and presentation, Opie’s photographic portraits draw from 17th Century portraiture by Dutch and German masters. The “family” presented in the photographs almost reads like a revisionist history of portraiture, where bruises, tattoos, or piercings are worn as proudly as a coat of arms. Opie’s singular printing technique verges on the painterly rendering a freshness and forgoing the “photomentary” in her use of portraiture.

Opie’s realm of beauty, in which codified notions of gender and desire no longer exist, yields an alternative, boundless space for the enactment of desire. Through the photographs she and her subjects inhabit an arena less alternative than universal, despite the often unwitting viewer’s acknowledgement of such. Opie’s “Portraits” have been an ongoing series since late 1992, and have coincided with other simultaneous photographic projects she has been working on.







There will be an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, June 4th, from 6:00-8:00 pm. For further questions please contact Stuart Regen or Shaun Caley at the gallery.