If you don’t know Metinides, you owe it to yourself to go to
the show. If you saw his brilliant Chelsea debut a couple of years back at Anton
Kern, this is an okay show. But either way, it is heartening to see the Chelsea
return of the Lord of The Mexican Blood Press. For those of you not in the know,
my understanding is that in Mexico tabloids traditionally featured celebrities
doing embarrassing things and people dying horribly. Metinides is the king of
pictures of people dying horribly. His previous show at Anton Kern was much
more edited and stressed the formal aspects of his pictures. The show elevated
a talented craftsman to the level of mind-warping art. Unfortunately Aperture,
with the best of intentions but possibly a different outlook on photography,
presents the work as an informative history of Metinides’ career as well as his
place in the blood press. As enjoyable as it is to see the pictures in the
context of the tabloids as well as the pleasure getting to see a large quantity
of his work in a gallery, this show does bring his pictures down to earth and
transform him back into the intense journalist that he was as opposed to the
mystical outsider artist of death that I like to imagine him to be. Either way,
the pictures are crazy, and even if you can’t motivate yourself to get to the
show watch this: (www.vice.com/en_uk/art-talk/enrique-metinides). Right? Taping
action-movie explosions and news coverage of volcanoes? Remorse over not
getting to photograph 9/11? Dude is amazing.
Through Apr. 20th
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