Like One Of Your French Girls by Jeremy Kost
SELF PUBLISHED 2017
10" x 9"
112 PAGES
Book Synopsis
Limited to only 400 numbered copies, each with a UNIQUE oil paint "sketch" on the back cover of the book, "Like One Of Your French Girls" is the first self-published artist's book by Jeremy Kost. For Jeremy, everyday life assumes the quality of a flamboyant fairytale. His images are alternately verite and constructed, gritty nightlife realism or staged and choreographed fantasies.
By taking the characters out of the nightclub and into the daylight, it evolves into an investigation of performance, identity, and becoming. Featuring RuPaul's DragRace stars Sharon Needles, Alaska Thunderfvck, Detox Icunt, Violet Chacki, Trixie Mattell, Raja Gemini, the majority of these Polaroids were made before the show's meteoric success (largely between 2009 and 2012).
Here they are swathed in heavy oil paint, creating a tension between photograph and painting, character and masking, attention and abstraction. Please consider this an invitation to enter their world, one Polaroid and palette knife stroke at a time.
Kost is strongly influenced by Warhol in both his choice of subjects and technique. Extending the creative potential of Warhol’s favorite tools, Kost makes use of the Polaroid camera, silkscreen processes, and textured paintwork. He might bejewel his Polaroids with oil paint, use them as the basis for silkscreen paintings, or amass them together in elaborate, multilayered photo-collages.
Kost’s work is included in multiple private and public collections across the globe, including LACMA, Museo Jumex, MoCA Los Angeles, MFA Houston, The Studio Museum Harlem, The Nerman Museum, and many more. He has exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Galerie Nuke, Paris, and Galerie Charlotte Moser in Geneva. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including State of the Art – New Contemporary Photography, NRW Forum, Dusseldorf, Germany; Dress Codes, International Center of Photography Triennial of Photography and Video, New York, NY and many others.
His bibliography includes It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn, a monograph published (2011) by powerHouse, Fractured, published by Damiani (2014), and Like One Of Your French Girls, his first self published effort (2017).
Like One Of Your French Girls by Jeremy Kost
SELF PUBLISHED 2017
10" x 9"
112 PAGES
Book Synopsis
Limited to only 400 numbered copies, each with a UNIQUE oil paint "sketch" on the back cover of the book, "Like One Of Your French Girls" is the first self-published artist's book by Jeremy Kost. For Jeremy, everyday life assumes the quality of a flamboyant fairytale. His images are alternately verite and constructed, gritty nightlife realism or staged and choreographed fantasies.
By taking the characters out of the nightclub and into the daylight, it evolves into an investigation of performance, identity, and becoming. Featuring RuPaul's DragRace stars Sharon Needles, Alaska Thunderfvck, Detox Icunt, Violet Chacki, Trixie Mattell, Raja Gemini, the majority of these Polaroids were made before the show's meteoric success (largely between 2009 and 2012).
Here they are swathed in heavy oil paint, creating a tension between photograph and painting, character and masking, attention and abstraction. Please consider this an invitation to enter their world, one Polaroid and palette knife stroke at a time.
Kost is strongly influenced by Warhol in both his choice of subjects and technique. Extending the creative potential of Warhol’s favorite tools, Kost makes use of the Polaroid camera, silkscreen processes, and textured paintwork. He might bejewel his Polaroids with oil paint, use them as the basis for silkscreen paintings, or amass them together in elaborate, multilayered photo-collages.
Kost’s work is included in multiple private and public collections across the globe, including LACMA, Museo Jumex, MoCA Los Angeles, MFA Houston, The Studio Museum Harlem, The Nerman Museum, and many more. He has exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Galerie Nuke, Paris, and Galerie Charlotte Moser in Geneva. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including State of the Art – New Contemporary Photography, NRW Forum, Dusseldorf, Germany; Dress Codes, International Center of Photography Triennial of Photography and Video, New York, NY and many others.
His bibliography includes It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn, a monograph published (2011) by powerHouse, Fractured, published by Damiani (2014), and Like One Of Your French Girls, his first self published effort (2017).