HW Pick: Stripped By Laura Carton

Based in New York and Harlem studio artist Laura Carton created the photographs in ‘Stripped’ by downloading a variety of pornographic images from the Internet, removing the bodies and then digitally reconstructing the backgrounds from the existing evidence.

‘What s particularly alluring about these images is the way they implicate the viewer in the missing action . . . shorn of buffed, blow-dried actors, they lose their practical function and become open-ended. Your imagination does the rest.’ – The New York Times

Looking beyond the camouflage of naked flesh, what remain are the carefully constructed and over-produced fictions of domestic space, suburban melodramas, utopian ideals and fantasies.

These new narratives offer a number of sites from which to question underlying assumptions about sexuality, class, race, desire and commodification. ‘Stripped’ is printed in a first edition of 500 copies.

Laura Carton’s work has been exhibited at Kunstmuseene Bergen, Norway, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the Queens Museum of Art, NY, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY and the ICA, Philadelphia.

“Stripped,” a monograph of photographs, was published by Nazraeli Press (2010).

Born in Los Angeles, Carton received a B.A. in French Literature from UC Berkeley, attended the Whitney ISP (2001-2002), and lives in New York.

Get your signed copy by the artist here.

Photographs by Laura Carton.
Nazraeli Press, Portland, 2009. 60 pp., 27 four color illustrations., 12×13″.

Photo credit: 1) http://www.heavyhangers.com. 2) http://www.roughrider.com, 2000 3) http://www.dirtydomains.com, 2002 4) http://www.bootybangers.com, 2004. 5) http://www.youngandtight.com, 2003. 6) http://www.youngandtight.com. 7) http://www.6teen.com, 2004.

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