ClampArt is pleased to announce “Laura Stevens | Him”—the artist’s first solo show with the gallery, and her first solo exhibition in New York City.Over the course of one year, Laura Stevens invited over fifty men to her home in Paris to be photographed naked. Most were strangers, and it would be the first time for the artist and model to meet. Stripping her bed to a white sheet, the artist’s most intimate space became the sight for the male model to be at his most intimate. An area with defined boundaries, the artist looked on while the man moved within the space.Stevens writes: “Being a woman, at the age of forty, contemplating the naked male body feels curiously problematic. With representations of the male nude predominantly made by male artists, there is a lack of imagery exploring a female sensual response to male beauty. Regardless of the advances made in recognising women’s capacity for and right to visual pleasure, the historically dominant male gaze prevails.”The artist allowed herself to move beyond clichéd representations of masculinity as “hard” or “active,” and she explored vulnerability and softness, which often have been perceived as feminine qualities.“Allowing oneself to be the object of another’s gaze requires yielding one’s control and allowing for a revealing to occur, both physically and emotionally. To be naked-as-an-object—to become a nude—furthers this uncovering. In photographing this series of men I was entrusted with this exposure.”
_______________________Laura Stevens is a British artist who received her BA from Leeds Metropolitan University before furthering her studies at the University of Brighton where she received a Master’s in Photography in 2007. She currently resides in Paris. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island; Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, Massachusetts; and Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.