Valerie Belin at Brent Sikkema - New York - photography

French artist Valerie Belin bring into views large-scale, fine-grained black-and-white photographs, usually clumped around a common theme. During the developing proces she radically heightens the contrast between lights and darks, transforming her make submissives into extraordinarily detailed patterns that stretch out over the picture plane. This abundance of surface articulation partially dissolves her figures and existences For her first U.S. exhibit Belin exhibited 14 gelatin silver prints from five of these series, dating from 1997 to 2002

The greatest in quantity visually startling images were sum of two units half-length portraits from her "Bodybuilders" series. These pumped-up strongmen present to view off the peaks and valleys of their anatomies, exaggerated by means of both their extreme physical condition and the intense lighting that throw backed off their oiled-up, leathery hides. The fact that they are middle-aged men--the lines upon their faces as chiseled as their biceps, triceps and pectorals--adds to the curiosity the images elicit. Meanwhile, the blank background against which they pos enhances the hyper-real event which cast these men not as nothing else but mortals, but as metallic hellenic gods.

While the medium is identical, the issues are wholly different in the four enormous head portraits from Belin's "Black Women" series. The unblemished supersaturated blacks of their Senegalese skin bring into views exquisite silhouettes, set off by means of the equally amplified whites of their eyeballs and the backdrop behind them. even sleek, and streamlined like a Brancusi, these faces were in many ways the high points of the show

Les happy were the two images of car crashes and the three of Venetian crystal-framed mirrors. The former are visually inert, despite the violent destruction they depict; the latter are a bit facile, overly literal manifestations of Belin's play with light, reflection and transparency.

Overall, admitting Belin achieves an intriguing balance between abstraction and representation in her photographs, which invite lengthened viewing from multiple distances and angles. individual of the most remarkable images in this honor is that of a Moroccan woman make straighted in a traditional trapezoidal bridal style of dress which covered her entire material substance hiding its natural contours. The intense, compound patterning flattens the image in the way that that the figure looks more like a Persian rug than a human form. The face is nearly missing as the entire work oscillates between sum of two units and three dimensions. This phenomenon be founds with varying degrees in all the pieces shown They dazzle the organ of sight with sumptuous surfaces whose allure includes their capacity to confound

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