An invitation to a private collection

Courtesy of Yvon Lambert New York. Photo by Bill Orcutt

Installation view of “Mario Testino: At Home” at Yvon Lambert gallery

BY JEFFREY CYPHERS WRIGHT

Imagine you live in a beautiful home with high ceilings, fireplaces and black parquet floors. Your end tables shelter stacks of books and the maroon walls are covered with your collection of contemporary art. Such is the transporting feeling one gets on walking into Yvon Lambert’s summer show, “Mario Testino: At Home.”

Tall and suave, Mario Testino is a British-based photographer who is known for style and glamour. His Gucci campaign is credited with shifting the focus from grunge to a new Apollonian vision of luxury and sexuality. His portraits of Princess Diane and others attracted more visitors to the National Portrait Gallery in London than any other show. And in addition to collecting art, he has collaborated with Karen Kilimnik, Nigel Cooke and other artists.

Here in Chelsea, Testino’s idealized projection of a dream home sets the stage for a distinctive viewing experience. The intimacy of the show, fused with notions of rarified power, unleashes a euphoric aura. The divide between audience and artwork, so palpable in a typical exhibition, is muted and here one feels more “at home.”

The works run the gamut of styles and set up their own dialogues and rhythms. One theme is masks. Andrew Mania’s “Mask” is a pencil portrait of a pensive young man surrounded by several frames — apposite for a collector who frames people (with his camera). Adding a sense of dangerous play, a hockey mask dangles from one frame’s corner.

Beginning with a picture of a head, John Stezaker adds a postcard over the face, altering the image completely. In “Mask XXIX” a postcard of a cavern is anthropomorphized. Dark recesses become eyes. Stalagmites become teeth. There is something horrific in the re-contextualized image that makes us question our imaginations and the enjoyment we find in being spooked.

Also disturbing is Nicola Tyson’s “Portrait Head” series. On the same human scale as Mania and Stezaker, Tyson devolves faces into abstract notations held in place by eyes or a mouth. These acrylic on paper “portraits” are deceptively simple. Their bold swirls and solid background revel in a vibrant palette. Close inspection reveals intricate drying patterns and fine brushwork. In some sense, every portrait has an element of self-portraiture. The “portrait” has become a place to explore composition.

As if to drive home the point that all subjects are somehow internalized, six clowns by Uwe Henneken sit on a bench conversing in the egalitarian afternoon.

A mirror is another metaphor for a denizen of fashion and royalty. Glenn Ligon’s seven-foot-high “Mirror” crowns one of the two fireplaces in the exhibit and to some extent serves as an anchor. A combination of silkscreen, coal dust, acrylic and oilstick on canvas, the jagged streaks in this black on black work resemble an antique mirror. Another large, dark work, the unframed print of “Eclipse” by Wolfgang Tillmans hangs nearby like a bookend.

To the left of “Mirror” is a super-svelte minimalist composition by Gregor Hildebrandt, made surprisingly of cassette tape on linen. The tiny strips are gradated into nine broad bands of earth tones, punctuated by bits of red and white and wisps of blue. Lovely.

Other standout works included Rachel Kneebone’s erotic Southern Ice porcelain sculptures, Elizabeth Peyton’s monotype portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe and a Munchean allegory by Norbert Schwontowski.

In a counter-intuitive move, Testino commissioned fellow Brit photographer Idris Khan to do a series of new works. Beginning with photos by Testino of artist’s studios, these small black and white photographs combine digital and analog techniques. At first I didn’t see much except shades of gray. Then I noticed the chockablock play of verticals, diagonals and horizontals. Gradually faces appeared — faint apparitions enveloped in layers of multiple exposures. Austere and remote, the semi-emergent images rose as if from a dream. It’s like looking at clouds that continually change as if time itself were still developing.

You can tell a lot about people by what they collect — and what they give away. Mario Testino has given us a truly great show.