Robert Mapplethorpe: Subject Object Image
Exhibition Walkthrough
22 January 2024
Robert Mpplethorpe: Subject Object Image, 2023, exhibition view, Alison Jacqes, London.
Robert Mapplethorpe: Subject, Object, Image, the first solo presentation of the artist’s work in the UK in seven years, closed on 20 January 2024. Many of the images included in the exhibition had not been widely exhibited before; as this exhibition walkthrough looks back on, these included still lifes created using everyday objects, some of which Mapplethorpe collected with his long-term partner, Sam Wagstaff. Rare Dye-transfer colour photographs portraying flowers, including orchids and roses, as erotically beautiful, punctuated the otherwise monochromatic works grouped together in the exhibition. A second space encapsulated a classic portrait gallery featuring artists and creatives from New York in the 1970s and 80s, and the downstairs gallery showcased a small selection of Mapplethorpe’s oversized polaroids of Ken Moody.
‘There are moments where Mapplethorpe shifts from his sculptural depiction of the body, when the object becomes the subject, and the tenderness of his Herculean bodies come to the fore. […] Mapplethorpe didn’t see himself as existing totally outside his subjects. “If i am at a party, I want to be at the party”, he once said. “Too many photographs use the camera to avoid participating in things. They become professional observers”. But it’s his party at the end of the day. In all it’s complicated, stimulating glory’.
— Emily Steer, Plaster Magazine, 2023