Living statues dipped in wax leaking, human figures preserved in amber dreamlike, as if they were coated with a layer of gold. The internationally renowned American photographer Blake Little, has experienced a surprisingly unusual in its project “Preservation”: cover the human bodies of sweet honey dripping and sticky. Famous for his photographs depicting the great Hollywood actors made in the last thirty years, has recently decided to grapple with the complex world of contemporary art, and his first work of this type came out February 28 in the form of official book.
The result is undeniably charming, bare individuals on which is poured nectar with multiple properties. The photographer seems to propose the contemporary versions of fossil animals covered with petrified resin, reproducing a preservative dimension, inherent in that moment immortalized by photography. The human body thus appears distorted and changed in its aesthetic effect getting an attractive yet extremely strange. The liquid enhances the plasticity of the human figure, giving a sense of sweet softness. To search for models suitable for the realization of his work, Little posted on a bulletin board online in an ad calling for people to an unspecified “art project”.
To his surprise, once explained to candidates what it was, 80% of them decided to stay and be immortalized naked and encapsulated by a layer of honey. Protagonists of the images are therefore people from all social, lean, obese, young, old. The author himself said he was “amazed by the transformations of the honey, how can distort and amplify the forms, highlighting the physical perfection, generating repulsion and suggest both immortality and death.” The photographs will be exhibited at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles from March 7 to April 18, 2015.
