Bubblegum Club

Tag: 2018 Aperture Summer Open

  • Gowun Lee // exploring social issues with a conceptual lens

    Gowun Lee // exploring social issues with a conceptual lens

    Describing herself as a visual artist who uses photography as her chosen medium, Gowun Lee explores social issues in a conceptual manner. She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, and her work has been included in exhibitions around the world, the most recent being the 2018 Aperture Summer Open titled The Way We Live Now in New York.

    Lee has moved from New York to South Korea for her ongoing project which brings light to the fact that the majority of LGBTQ people in South Korea have to hide their true identities, despite the increase in LGBTQ activism and awareness. This is represented visually in her series I’m Here With You, where the people photographed never face the camera directly. Instead their bodies are turned and their faces are hidden. “The LGBTQ individuals photographed – all facing away from the camera – remind us of how Korean society continues to neglect and refuse to accept them. “By creating these images, my intent is to both implicate the viewer in the nation’s larger refusal to acknowledge the identity of LGBTQ individuals and, more importantly, to spur us all to take action and change this attitude once and for all,” Lee says in an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail. This series is a powerful portrayal of lived experiences, and the way in which this affects people’s lives, with those photographed often alone within the frame. A creepy stillness becomes apparent with Lee’s compositional choices.

    To check out more of work visit Lee’s website.

  • Tyler Mitchell’s Candid Lens and Raw Depictions of Youth sets him apart as a young creative

    Tyler Mitchell’s Candid Lens and Raw Depictions of Youth sets him apart as a young creative

    A photographic and filmic dexterity finding its nucleus in real life experience. Candid portraits that remain in cognitive thought. A stylistic virtue that comes across as haphazard play.

    Tyler Mitchell is a filmmaker and photographer from Atlanta currently based in Brooklyn, New York. A recent film graduate from NYU, his venture into photography was prompted by a skater friend’s introduction to a Canon 7D.

    With his work coming full circle his lens has been graced by the presence of Jaden Smith and Kevin Abstract. Collaborating with Abstract has quickly set him apart as a filmmaker to watch. Filming the rapper with pink hair in a brooding gaze, Tyler used an underground club as the backdrop for ‘Hell/Heroina‘ released in 2014 and made a satirical music video titled ‘Dirt‘ for Brockhampton that was led by Abstract.

    A career-defining moment in the young creative’s life was the release of his photography book, El Paquete (his first self-published book). In Havana, Cuba, Tyler aimed to remove himself from that which is familiar to him. The end product of the 30 rolls of film used and developed is an arresting body of work taking the shape of a publication. Within its pages is reflected the raw energy and youth of an area on the verge of digital advancement. El Paquete gained traction from publications such as Dazed and i-D and quickly skyrocketed the young talent’s photographic work, cementing him as a prominent creative within the photographic landscape. Since then, Tyler has exhibited at the 2018 Aperture Summer Open in New York.

    Tyler’s work reflects rawness and honesty. His practice cannot be boxed into a specific set of aesthetic values as he plays with both shadow and shadow-less representations, saturated and desaturated stylings. What remains true in his work is its candid, easy-going nature that wraps around your mind as you see individuals depicted in intimate gazes and pensive thought. The young creative’s craft is advanced and his career is soaring at a considerably young age and seeing where his work takes him next will be a blast I’m sure.

    For more of his work visit his website.

     

  • Bubblegum Club selected to be part of the 2018 Aperture Summer Open

    Bubblegum Club selected to be part of the 2018 Aperture Summer Open

    A picture is worth a thousand words. This idiom speaks to the premise behind the 2018 Aperture Summer Open exhibition titled The Way We Live Now. Aperture Summer Open is an annual open-submission exhibition at Aperture Foundation’s gallery in New York. It features work selected by a prominent curator or editor, with the exhibition unpacking critical themes and trends influencing international contemporary photographic practice.

    As a point of departure for this year’s exhibition, the photographs from the selected artists and photographers look at how images come to capture and become visual markers of rapid change in society, politics, beauty, and self-expression. The exhibition features 18 artists and the way in which they engage with the “currents and contradictions of life” in the 21st century. These artists and photographers reflect on how we define images and how images define our lives. This year Bubblegum Club was selected as one of the displaying artists.

    As an online magazine and content agency reporting on and contextualizing trends across creative practices in South Africa, Africa and across the world, we have developed a fluid aesthetic that responds and contributes to cultural moods. This taps into grunge, DIY approaches to styling and photographic strategies that plug into references that are reflective of the discursive and visual languages present in urban subcultures. The construction of the image becomes a condensed moment in time, a contextualized mirror of current ways of being.

    The images chosen by Bubblegum Club were drawn from different aspects of our work, including cover shoots and editorials. Makeup artists Orli Oh, Katelyn Gerke and Nuzhah Jacobs, as well as hair stylist Mimi Duma and styling assistant Lebogang Ramfete, contributed to the creation of the images on show, with styling and photography by creative director Jamal Nxedlana. Lightfarm has continued to assist with post production and with printing. A special thank you to adidas South Africa for supporting the trip to New York.

    The 2018 exhibition taking place from 27 June – 16 August is curated by Siobhán Bohnacker, senior photo editor, the New Yorker; Brendan Embser, managing editor, Aperture magazine; Marvin Orellana, photo editor, New York magazine; and Antwaun Sargent, independent writer and critic.