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Featured Collection
Gymnopédies
Jean Karotkin’s series of botanical portraits takes its name from a trio of piano compositions by 19th century French composer Erik Satie. Void of connotation, the unusual title freed Satie from stylistic constraints and gifted his audience a new experience of music. Karotkin’s Gymnopédies encourage a similar foray in the realm of flower photography. The artist disavows context and convention, eschewing sentimentality in favor of heady tonal interplay. The chiaroscuro both abstracts and anthropomorphizes, exposing some of nature’s more subversive personalities. As with Satie’s work, these images pacify through dramatic texture, emotional provocation and a welcomed dissonance. They are innocent and erotic still lifes in motion.
