Juergen Teller brings “Ukraine” to the USA

19:00 February 7th one of the leading representatives of contemporary art photographer Juergen Teller opens a new personal exhibition "Ukraine" in New York's Lehmann Maupin Gallery.

Teller was commissioned, along with four other artists, by the PinchukArtCentre to interpret Ukraine for the 52nd International Venice Biennale 2007, where a selection from this series was first shown. This exhibition marks the first time an expanded version, along with other new works, will be shown in the United States. Among 51 works featuring in the NYC are portraits of ordinary Ukrainians, pictures of the night life of Kyiv, a special project carried out for one of the world leading fashion magazines - "W" engaging Ukrainian and foreign models. Exhibition also profiles pictures taken by Teller at "Interpipe" Tube Plant in Dnepropetrovsk.

"Due to cooperation of PinchukArtCentre with the leading contemporary artists, Ukraine is strengthening its positions on the map of modern world art", - said a president of PinchukArtCentre Peter Doroshenko. According to Alexander Soloviyov, one of PinchukArtCentre curators, "Juergen Teller's Ukrainian picture series is not just a usual glamorous fashion story. He has brought the maximal sense of life to it, skillfully employing the elements of trash, a realistic phychologizm and a spectacular absurd".

Teller's "Ukraine" reflects his own interpretation of the country whose brash youthful energy and obsession with new values of Consumption Epoch capriciously interfere with the actual economical changes of the recent years. In Teller's Kyiv the membrane between harsh economic reality and obtainable fantasy is surprisingly thin and these pictures represent a place where beautiful girls wait to be discovered in a place where the desire for luxury has reached a fever pitch.

Underlining the inevitable globalization and increasing influence of the world fashion culture on Ukraine, Juergen Teller added to the Ukrainian picture series some of his last works: portraits from recent ad campaigns for Vivienne Westwood and Marc Jacobs; photographs of Victoria Beckham and Bjork, private photographs of his children and friends, as well as an exuberant portrait of Marc Jacobs himself.

"Ukraine" Exhibition is on view at Lehmann Maupin Gallery (www.lehmannmaupin.com) in New York, USA (540 West 26 Street) from February, 7th - March, 16th. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10AM - 6PM.

Born in Germany, Juergen Teller has been living and working in London for 20 years. According to prestigious photography survey Click Double Click (2006), Teller is one of the world's leading photographers. He has also been named the one of the most influential photographers for the last 15 years. Alongside with other contemporary photographers, such as Corinne Day, David Slim, Nigel Shafran, he made an important contribution to the evolution of fashion photograph from ostentatious glossiness of the 80-ies to natural realism of the 90-ies. Teller was the recipient of the world's most prestigious Citibank Photography Prize (2003). Participated in 52nd Venice Biennale. The biggest personal exhibitions include Awailable at Inverleith House, Edinburgh in 2007 and Do You Know What I Mean at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris in 2006. Cooperates with such publications as i-D, The Face, Vogue, Index, W. Juergen Teller pictures the advertisement campaigns for Helmut Lang, Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, Vivienne Westwood, Marc Jacobs, Luis Vuitton and others. He also worked with Kate Moss, Bjork, Elton John, Arnold Swarzenegger, Kurt Cobain, Victoria and David Beckham.

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