David LaChapelle

exhibition review by
Jim Casper

American Pop photographer David LaChapelle is in the art-world spotlight this year, with a big mid-career retrospective exhibition in Paris (February 6 - May 31), and a simultaneous solo show that just opened in Mexico City.

His work is over-the-top, which is often appropriate for his subject matter — celebrities, sex, drugs, money, greed, high-fashion and excess of all kinds. Recently, he's been applying his characteristic style to a wide range of other themes like war and the media, spirituality, natural disasters, floods and hurricanes, conspicuous consumption, fossil fuels and carbon footprints, old master artworks and surrealism.

As in any retrospective, there is a large variety of work, and the presentation of different phases of LaChapelle’s art is well-suited to the grand halls and majestic rooms of this opulent old building. (La Monnaie de Paris, the Parisian museum of coins and currency, is a shrine to the ideas of money and war medallions.)

— Jim Casper