Lindsay Lohan Strikes A Pose. Make That Many Poses In Richard Phillips' First Film.

above: Film stills from Lindsay Lohan by Richard Phillips

Lindsay Lohan - A Richard Phillips Film, Jul 28th 2011 at The Gagosian Gallery


The press release:
Gagosian Gallery announces Lindsay Lohan, Richard Phillips' first short film. In his 90-second motion portrait of Lindsay Lohan, Phillips draws on the conventions of his painting that explore the legacies of classical portraiture in relation to the mediated representations of contemporary popular culture.

The film depicts Lohan in a number of classical poses, with references to iconic moments in film, such as Brigitte Bardot smoldering in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, or the searing psychosexual interplay of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman in Ingmar Bergman's Persona. To create a timeless and psychologically charged Hollywood setting, Phillips repurposed a remote Malibu mansion, but freighted it with the speculative desire of contemporary cinematic performance.

Through Phillips's lens, the defiant openness that makes Lohan so compelling on film becomes the ignition key of each image; the pause before action that allows for the identities of actor and director to meld, where expectation and projection contrast with the construction of multilayered identity.

In these full-frame motion portraits of Lohan, Phillips repudiates the cynical expediency associated with the artistic and commercial convention of the screen test by examining and exposing its manipulative and coercive undertones. He thus works to subvert this carefully constructed form, presenting Lohan as released from acutely mediated narrative representation.

"Lindsay has an incredible emotional and physical presence on screen that holds an existential vulnerability, while harnessing the power of the transcendental—the moment in transition. She is able to connect with us past all of our memory and projection, expressing our own inner eminence." -Richard Phillips

Richard Phillips’ Lindsay Lohan will be included in Commercial Break, presented by the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Venice, June 1 - 5, concurrent with the 54th Biennale di Venezia.

Credits:
Directed by: Richard Phillips and Taylor Steele
Director of Photography: Todd Heater
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick
Creative Director: Dominic Sidhu
Art Director: Kyra Griffin
Editor: Haines Hall
Color mastering: Pascal Dangin for Boxmotion
Second Director of Photography: Alejandro Berger
Directors’ Assistant: Katerina Llanes
Wardrobe Stylist: Ira Hammons-Glass
Hair Stylist: Aaron Light
Make Up Stylist: Mylah Morales
Photographer: Christelle De Castro
Photographer's Assistant: Gregory Brouillette
Music: Tamaryn and Rex John Shelverton
Production: GE Projects
Typeface(s): Jean-Luc by Atelier Carvalho Bernau

Richard Phillips would like to thank Lindsay Lohan, Eleanore Lieven, Melissa Lazarov, John Good, Natalia Bonifacci, Doug Aitken, Aimee Walleston, Michelle Finocchi, Ania Diakoff, Patrik Sandberg, Chrisitian Kaemmerling and Group Lotus, Lynne Mannino at Spotwelders, Nadia Sadigianis at Box Studios, Jess Rotter at Mexican Summer, Mark Mayer, Celestine Agency, MILK Studios, Chateau Marmont, and Gagosian Gallery. Special thanks to Josephine Meckseper.

View more videos from "Commercial Break," presented by the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture: www.commercialbreak.org

GREED: All About The Faux Fragrance Bottle, Posters, & Video

GREED

Francesco Vezzoli's project 'Greed' is a faux ad campaign for an imagined perfume. The entire project consists of a video trailer, a video (faux commercial), the bottle design and print campaign. The video was directed by the notoriously-exiled director Roman Polanski and features Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams embroiled in a fierce battle over the fanciful scent. The spurious campaign attempts to isolate and imitate the hype created by the promotion of a new luxury product in the mass market.

THE BOTTLE DESIGN

Just as Marcel Duchamp created Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette in 1921 using a Rigaud perfume bottle with an altered label Francesco Vezzoli has created a signature perfume for the contemporary moment. Greed’s label features Vezzoli in drag, photographed by Francesco Scavullo, where Duchamp appeared on his perfume bottle as Rrose Sélavy, photographed by Man Ray.

Duchamps' Faux perfume bottle and label:



Francesco Vezzoli's Greed:

above: artist Francesco Vezzoli's Greed, The Perfume That Doesn't Exist, 2009
Crystal, paper and ribbon, 15 11/16 x 10 5/8 x 5 1/8 inches (40 x 27 x 13 cm)

THE INSTALLATION:

The installation at the Gagosian Gallery in Rome features the perfume in the center of the room flanked by the 'faux movie posters' (more on those below) and the faux commercial ran on a monitor:






THE GALLERY SHOW INVITE:


THE POSTERS

The series of needlework portraits of leading female figures in art history –including Tamara de Lempicka, Eva Hesse, Leonor Fini – serve as immortalized endorsements of Vezzoli’s fragrance.

The posters for the product by Francesco Vezzoli are made of inkjet, wool, cotton, metallic embroidery and custom jewelry on brocade. Each features a different famous female and measures 70 7/8 x 51 3/16 inches (180 x 130 cm):







above bottle, posters and installation photos courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

THE VIDEO / FAUX COMMERCIAL:

stills:




still photos courtesy of Francesco Vezzoli Studio

The trailer for the video:


See the complete video here.



GREED is just the latest castle in what the Gagosian Gallery coins Vezzoli's "ongoing preoccupation with the fundamental ambiguity of truth, the seductive powers of language, and the instability of the human persona in a series of works that explore the undisputed power of contemporary media culture."

According to Vezzoli, his art is designed to hold a mirror to society which idolizes the concept of celebrity. At the same time, Vezzoli's racy art plumbs the depths of celebrity culture itself and seemingly revels in it, with devastatingly funny results. "It's all part of this kind of style of promotional deconstruction that I've been researching for a long time. I'm not so much of a moralist trying to make a statement," he said. "I'm fascinated by celebrity. It's a phenomenon, and I don't think the whole celebrity culture is silly. It invades everything: fashion, cinema. Without stars, no event is deemed worthy of the media to cover - you need that red carpet. My work is the study of media."

About the artist:

Francesco Vezzoli was born in 1971, in Brescia, Italy. He studied at the Central St. Martin’s School of Art in London from 1992 to 1995. His work has been exhibited at many institutions including: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2002); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2004 and 2005); Museu Serralves, Porto (2005); Le Consortium, Dijon (2006); and the Power Plant, Toronto (2007). Vezzoli’s work has also been featured in the 26th São Paulo Biennial (2004); the 51st Venice Biennale (2005); the Whitney Biennial (2006); and the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007). He currently lives and works in Milan.

Gagosian Gallery, Via Francesco Crispi 16, Rome.