ANDY_DANDY

Clic Gallery and Christiane Celle are proud to present the US debut of the HILTON BROTHERS' acclaimed exhibition ANDY DANDY. The show will run from September 9 to October 3, 2010 at Clic Gallery, 255 Centre Street in Soho, New York. There will be an exclusive opening reception on Tuesday, September 14, from 6 to 8 pm in the evening. The reception will also be the official launch of the book LADY WARHOL, published by La Fabrica Madrid .

THE HILTON BROTHERS are longtime friends and collaborators CHRISTOPHER MAKOS and PAUL SOLBERG. CHRISTOPHER MAKOS trained under Man Ray in Italy, and his photographs have been published in Interview, Rolling Stone, Esquire and New York Magazine, among others. Makos was a close friend and frequent collaborator with Andy Warhol and is the author of the photobooks WARHOL/MAKOS IN CONTEXT, ANDY IN CHINA, EXHIBITIONISM and CHRISTOPHER MAKOS POLAROIDS ,with text by Calvin Klein. PAUL SOLBERG, called "the most modern photographer in America" by Makos, is the author of BLOOM and MISTAKEN IDENTITY. ANDY DANDY is an unusual art project, combining two series taken years apart: Makos's stark black and white portraits of Andy Warhol exploring his sense of gender self-image, and Solberg's BLOOM series, which are crisp, mesmerizing still lives of flowers. Each Warhol is matched with a flower shot, and the resulting diptychs are witty and unexpected, offering a fresh, surprising look at one of the icons of modern art. An art marriage: Warhol vamps for the camera in a Veronica Lake wig and full makeup as a film noir femme fatale, paired next to an eerily bright photo of a flower in full blossom. ANDY DANDY was previously exhibited at Caxa Madrid's Casa Encendida Foundation, Madrid, the Sebastian Guinness Gallery in Dublin, Ireland, and the Espace Cultural Ample in Barcelona, Spain. This is the US gallery debut.

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ANDYDANDY by CHRISTOPHER MAKOS AND PAUL SOLBERG

The Hilton Brothers latest collaboration, ANDYDANDY, is a portfolio of 20 digital pigment prints. All are diptychs that combine images from Makos "Altered Image" portraits of Andy Warhol with flower images from Solberg's "Bloom" series.

The images of Andy Warhol in "Andy Dandy" are the result of a 1981 collaboration between Makos and Warhol called "Altered Image", through which the photographer and his subject used unexpected combinations of simple elements to explore Identity, as did Man Ray (Makos' mentor) and Duchamp decades earlier. Warhol slightly altered his appearance with make-up and a wig, otherwise remaining in his street clothes. It was all the outward change Warhol felt he needed. Andy said, "I'm not trying to look beautiful like Elizabeth Taylor, I'm trying to show what it feels like to be beautiful like Elizabeth Taylor."

Solberg's photographs of single flowers, exquisitely composed and lit, pare the images down to the intensity of color and form. Solberg undertook his study of flowers as an exercise in using light to reveal the elemental purity of a subject otherwise encumbered by overexposure and banality, resulting in sensitive portraits rather than still life images. Like the "Altered Image" photos, many of Solberg's flowers are isolated subjects against a white background. This common white ground in the ANDYDANDY diptychs brings the disparate images into balance. ANDYDANDY considers the rich association between Andy Warhol and flowers by creating a beautiful and intriguing dialogue between Makos' and Solberg's work.

Andy wasn't the kind of dandy to wear a flower in his lapel, but as ANDYDANDY demonstrates, sometimes by just altering the image of one's work or oneself, a new beauty blooms.

Peter Wise