Photoshop Sugar Rush

So here are my 50 cents on David Lachapelle and his exhibition in Stockholm:

First I'd like to say I think DLC:s work is cool, rad and pretty gnarly. What he is doing right now is leaving the magazine and advertising world to get inte the art world. Wise choice, and he seems to be off bringing trunkfuls of cash to the bank. People are buying his posters and prints like icecream on the first day of summer.

The work he is showing has almost all been shot for various ad campaigns, fashion- and music magazines. Next to the beautiful super-tecnicolor prints are little signs in English and Swedish explaining all the concepts Lachapelle has been trying to get into his photos. The signs are telling us how to interpret his art, putting all kinds of social commentary into his fashion and pop star work. Now I can get a feeling that David is trying a little too hard to prove that he is a fine artist, and not so much a commercial one.

After half the exhibition one feels a bit like after having eaten a huge bag of candy. A little sugar-rushed, a bit like the brain is busy processing all the impressions of all those oiled up supermodel or superstar-bodies, buried under all kinds of fast food and so forth. I mean, the stuff is fantastic, the LA-colors, the LA-light, the LA-modified bodies and freaky LA-characters, it is truly amazing. I really like it. But I wouldn't put him close to someone like Andy Warhol. He is a bit too Disney for that. When Andy hung with Velvet Underground, David hung with Madonna, when Andy hung with Bianca Jagger, David hung with Pamela Anderson. See my point?

And one thing that leaves me no rest is that if you look closely on his work, you can see that a whole lot of it is Photoshop work, that he clones in people, cars, inflatable hamburgers or whatever. Now, isn't one part of being a fine Photographic artist that your pictures are not "fake"? That what you see on the print is really what was there when the picture was taken. Ok, they lok great, but shouldn't he call them collages or something?

Whatever, I like his work, and hugely recommend for anyone interested in pop culture seeing the show. However, I'm impressed of DLC as a LA-pop culture phenomenon, but not as impressed of his aspirations to turn his commercial portfolio into fine art.