Juergen Teller: Louis XV

In the gauche surroundings of a hotel room, Juergen Teller combines the braggadocio of his nude self-portraits with his ongoing paean to woman in an often x-rated filmic narrative. The faux-leather bound, gold leaf tipped slim volume, Louis XV contains a series of photographs that is an intimate tale of lust and excess with his latest muse, the actress Charlotte Rampling. Teller's work is essentially autobiographical--his art has always explored his personal milieu of friends and family and his position at the intersection of fashion and art. For some years he has also used the self-portrait as a ground for personal expression, theatrical role-play and exploring his relationship to his own history. At the same time, as essasyist Adrian Searle points out, "Teller frequently makes his appearance in his own photographs as though he has just blundered in like an unexpected and unwelcome guest, a gatecrasher. There is something either farcial or vainglorious about this, perhaps both. Something almost obscene, too, about the way he overwhelms certain of his images, disrupting them, hogging the lens, filling the frame, crashing about unconstrained, unleashed, as it were, dragging his life about with him. It is somehow embarrassing. You want to look the other way." Included with Louis XV is the 104-page exhibition catalogue, Ich Bin Vierzig, a paperback collection of selected images from the photographer's past works. It includes highlights from his Tracht and The Clients series.