EXHIBITION

Snap! Space presents new works by international artists Formento & Formento, Reine Paradis, Dina Litovsky, and Van deCamp & Heesterbeek. Additionally, the exhibition revisits works by legendary artist Cheyco Leidmann in collaboration with fashion designer Adam Selman, and features photographs by Hendrik Kerstens, Erwin Olaf, Mel Bagshaw, and Daniele Buetti. Exhibition curated by Patrick & Holly Kahn.

Husband and wife duo BJ and Richeille Formento create quasi-anthropological photographs. Weaving cinematic worlds drenched in sensuality, Formento + Formento produces genre-bending photography that is as conceptually rich as it is precisely crafted. The couple began collaborating in 2005, uniting BJ’s experience in fashion and street photography with Richeille’s background as a fashion designer and art director.
Reine Paradis constructs narrative photographs staging herself as the central figure in a surreal landscape. Endlessly drowning in a sea of vibrant color and hopelessly lost in a surrealist fantasy are just a few of the feelings one might get while viewing a work by Reine Paradis. The French-born, Los Angeles-based photographer uses a meticulous, multistep process to create these eye-catching works. A combination of conceptual drawings, still life photography and performance art create a fantastical story with an otherworldly narrative.
Dina Litovsky’s work examines social performances and group interactions in both public and private spaces. Dina was born in Ukraine and moved to New York in 1991. She has won various awards, including First Place in the NPPA Best of Photojournalism, the PDN Photo Annual and the International Photography Awards. Her work has been published in Time, The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Stern, Newsweek Japan, Wired, Photo District News and many others.
Patricia van de Camp studied graphic Art and photography in Amsterdam and Design in Denmark. Marc Heesterbeek studied architecture and urban planning in Eindhoven, Netherlands and space architecture in Houston. In 2018 they became an Art duo, combining their skills to create unique photographic works, exploring a new notion of classic beauty and reality.
Cheyco Leidmann established a new cutting edge style of visual expressionism in 1980 with hyperreal colors, which influenced an entire generation of photographers, fashion designers and cinephiles. Leidmann’s ‘Foxy Lady’ monograph was chosen by Vogue as one of the nine cult classic art books of the last five decades, and garnered numerous prestigious awards, including the New York Creative Directors Club Gold Award. Cheyco Leidmann works closely with his creative director Ypsitylla von Nazareth.
Mel Bagshaw was born in the UK and has an extensive background in the Arts. He earned a Fashion Photography MA with distinction from the London School of Fashion and the media award of the year for 2009. He states that his photographic works are ‘high gloss, high concept, full of natural ingredients and totally free from additives.’ Dollface (2008-2010) looks at the roles, dress and stages of women that have been discussed, celebrated, desired and fetishized by society as a whole. The photographs form a cohesive narrative and a metaphorical journey of development, growth, female identity and empowerment.
Daniele Buetti is a contemporary Swiss artist whose multi-media practice incorporates light installations, performance, photography, and sculpture in exposing the fragility of popular culture. In his series Looking for Love (1997-2000), he modified pictures of supermodels from journals and magazine, drawing tattoos, and scratching adhesions on their printed skin. .
Hendrik Kerstens is a Dutch photographer and visual artist. He is known for his portraits of his daughter Paula. A number of the portraits of Paula are clearly reminiscent of Johannes Vermeer. The austerity of the photograph, its clarity, the serene expression on the young girl’s face, and not least, the characteristic “Dutch” light, all combine to create this impression.
 Conceptually, Kerstens’ photographs play with the dialog between the mediums of painting and photography, with seriality, and time. His photographs have been collected by museums around the world and have inspired taste-makers as diverse as Elton John and Alexander McQueen.
Erwin Olaf’s art visualizes implicitly the unspoken, the overlooked, that typically resist easy documentation. Olaf’s trademark is to address social issues, taboos, and bourgeois conventions in a highly stylized and cunning mode of image making. Erwin Olaf has had numerous important group and solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally. His work is part of the collections of Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Groninger Museum, Groningen; Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany; FNAC Collection, Paris; CaldicCollection, Rotterdam; Rosenblum Collection, Paris.