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Larry Clark / What Do You Do For Fun?
The raw intensity of Larry Clark’s iconic work still carries its gloriously hormonal energy and frustration surprisingly well. And four decades on it remains as impacting and relevant as ever. Causing a stir since his publication of “Tulsa” in the early 1970s, Clark has worked extensively in photography and film, and links the two mediums together through the narrative of collage. In his first UK show since 2008, billed “What Do You Do For Fun?” and at the Simon Lee Gallery and following his contentious “Kiss The Past Hello” exhibition at Paris’ Musée d’Art Moderne last year, this outing highlights collage works, the debut of a silent film and also includes several vintage works.
On exhibition are “1992,” a collage of more than two-hundred staged photographs, and the more recent “I wanna baby before you die.” His subjects themselves are ever anguished, themselves also subject to a social fabric that places them in almost desperate situations. Manhood expectations. Drugs. But quite unlike the often pitiable, freakish subjects of, say, Diane Arbus, Clark’s always comes across as caught in the turbulence of coming of age. However jarring they might be, as can attest any of us who have seen his 1995 masterpiece, “Kids.” And though the world has changed drastically in the forty years since Tulsa showed its face to the world, Clark’s images continue to affect their viewers and to speak volumes about our relationships with our young, rebellious selves.
Running through the 2nd of April at Simon Lee Gallery, at 12 Berkeley Street in London.
Tag Christof – Images courtesy Simon Lee Gallery, London with special thanks to Edlyn Cunhill
