Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller

The exhibition presents new, never-before-shown works by Martin Schoeller from his internationally renowned series “Close Up”. The portraits explore the ways in which celebrities are seen and perceived, underscored by the artist's serial working method. For more than twenty years now, Martin Schoeller has been making portraits using an individual and inimitable formal and pictorial language that isolates and emphasizes individual facial characteristics. The people he portrays accept the rules the photographer imposes—rules that have made his style world-famous and that include the minimal application of makeup and a consistency in camera perspective and lighting. In the process, Martin Schoeller strips away the tools celebrities use to stage themselves and to fabricate a particular image; the result is that they seem vulnerable, unmasked, and easier to read, more like facial studies. Martin Schoeller studied at the Lette-Verein in Berlin and worked as an assistant to Annie Leibovitz. He lives and works in New York.