The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Wednesday September 23rd — —

“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Wednesday September 23rd — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Wednesday September 23rd — —

Selections From A Survey – Khrystyna’s World

Although we weren’t overwhelmed by what was on display at the last Unseen, there were still works which impressed us in the best possible way. We loved finally seeing the ‘Tokyo Parrots‘ in printed form, as discovering the larger-than-life ‘Facades’ images by Markus Brunetti, but most impressive was probably seeing the work of celebrated American photographer Todd Hido in person. For the first time in the Netherlands a solo exhibition of his work opened on the 12th of September at Alex Daniëls Reflex Amsterdam, who in turn showed a new group of works unique from the show named ‘Selections From A Survey – Khrystyna’s World’ at Unseen. 

Todd Hido excels in capturing a sense of the disturbed moment – whether in his eerie exteriors of isolated houses at night, where the only source of life emanates on to the street from a single lit room, or his carefully framed interior shots of freshly tousled sheets of a single bed, a numbing glare of an old TV set, and even in his disturbing yet evocative images of female models, a confusing yet very real range of female identities lifted from his past. His work evokes a sense of resonating unease: some images capturing pure vulnerability and others exhibiting strong empowerment.

These powerful cinematic images have a rich cultural impact, recalling the legacy of filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, novelists Raymond Carver and Stephen King.

The exhibition at Alex Daniëls Reflex Amsterdam invites viewers to dwell on the images and ideas that have followed the artist through his lifetime, continually finding new manifestations in his work. This selection focuses on alternatives, b-sides, brand new works, and unseen one-of-a-kind collages that Hido only recently added to his oeuvre in 2015 — not to mention a few unseen pieces to be included in his mid-career survey to be published by Aperture in Spring 2016. Reflected are Hido’s classic nocturnal themes and populated primarily with photographs of his model Khrystyna — a tacit partner in his cinematic narratives, and a shape shifter in the nightscapes, interiors, and psychological landscapes that she haunts.

Todd Hido is a San Francisco Bay Area-based artist whose work has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times Magazine, Eyemazing, Wired, Elephant, FOAM, and Vanity Fair. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Getty, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Pier 24 Photography, as well as in many other public and private collections. He has over a dozen published books; his most recent monograph titled ‘Excerpts from Silver Meadows‘ was released in 2013, along with an innovative b-sides box set designed to function as a companion piece to his award-winning monograph in 2014. Aperture will publish his mid-career survey in 2016.

All images courtesy of Alex Daniëls Reflex Amsterdam and Todd Hido.

‘Todd Hido, Selections from a Survey – Khrystyna’s World: Exhibition’ runs until November 15th 2015 at Alex Daniëls Reflex Amsterdam, opened Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 until 18:00, located at Weteringschans 79a in Amsterdam.

For more information see here.