Naked World

Naked World presents an uncompromising perspective on the human body. Its distinctively theatrical visual language challenges aesthetic constructions of embodiment, drawing the viewer into an intense series of emotional engagements. This is a world bared to the dynamism of its oppositions—the naked versus the clothed, fantasy versus reality, the beautiful versus the grotesque, male versus female, nostalgia versus a delight in the contemporary. Whether rendered in the idiom of hyperrealism, the fantastic or the grotesque, this collection of works preserves a central principle. The naked human form is more honest that the personality that inhabits it. The body, as we see it exposed here, is variously vulnerable or triumphant. Mockery alternates with ironic humor. Time after time, the act of exposure is the pretext for a deeper engagement with the secret world of the emotions in all of their splendor and cruelty. Naked World consists primarily of images and forms that excite its creators. Its world is the world of sensations—simultaneously sensual and quotidian, sublime and ridiculous. The act of photography concretizes these sensations in all their multiplicity. The exhibition thus eludes capture in a single word. Its genres range from impressionism to the grotesque. Stylistically, it enters into dialogue with the photography of Jan Saudek or the paintings of Lucien Freud. The creation of this large series of works has involved an extraordinary collaboration between the scriptwriter/director who authored the intervention, two photographers and a producer working together in a manner that is somewhat unusual for fine-art photography. Naked World was born out of the intersections between its creators. It retains the imprint of its beginnings in a way that profoundly shapes its artistic vision, leaving the collaboration free of accumulated stereotypes. Throughout it all, the naked body remains defiantly expressive, ruling out any possibility of indifference.