One of the pleasures of the life of a Jet Setter is that rare moment of discovery when you hear or see something that is so beyond chic, it’s transcendent. During the Art Los Angeles Contemporary Fair I had the opportunity to hear Todd Gray, a well-known as a photographer and conceptual artist, talk about his work at See Line Gallery, unbeknownst to him. Among various gems of vocational regalia recounted as I sat there in my anonymousness was a story of how he met Michael Jackson and worked as his personal photographer when Jackson was a young star. Jackson, by Gray’s account, was clearly his own creation – like Elvis or Liberace, a cultural phenom, paralleling the role of the visual artist. Gray, aware of the Jackson associations, has brilliantly raided his own historic photographs in order to create associations that resonate as both conceptual and poignant.
In the group show, “From My Universe: Objects of Desire Part II” at See Line Gallery in the Pacific Design Center, Gray has created a mysterious installation featuring among others, photographs of himself covered in shaving cream as a white-faced monster. The photographs have been cut out higgledy piggledy along the contours of his creamy white form creating ghosts that hover in the gray gallery space in juxtaposition to his photographs of Michael Jackson and African ceremonial masks. Gray has sublimated the notion of race here by creating a “gray” context signed for by the painted gray walls.
This review is from
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