June 3, 2017 |
I hate getting undressed. Some people love it. Some people never need an excuse to get their kit off. Not so at Ten Towers – perhaps surprisingly, as peddlers of smut, we are genuinely mortified by the idea of looking at ourselves a la nu. But, without coming across as perverted (we are) – looking at other people get undressed is another story. Especially handsome model types – and that’s precisely the subject of fashion-hall-of-famer Mario Testino’s newest exhibition – Mario Testino: Undressed, which opened at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin yesterday.
And the Helmut Newton Foundation is a fitting setting for the exhibition, considering the museum’s namesake’s fascination with the power and beauty of the human form – here, Testino exploring what it means to be starkers through photographs and film that blur the boundaries between eroticism, anatomy and art. If your minds work anything like ours, we should assure you that, according to the accompanying notes, whilst “playfully amorous”, there’s no full blown obscenity. You can take your mum.
The works on show are not your normal wall hung portraits either – instead, they are affixed directly to the walls meaning that every inch is covered – like a sort of nudey wallpaper. Alongside the exhibition will be a short film titled Undressing The Mind, in which Testino talks to psychoanalyst Kai Hammermeister to try and uncover the root of Testino’s fascination with the human bod. I’d say that could be quite useful for us as a form of therapy, but really, I think it’s safe to say we’re well beyond any medical help.
Mario Testino: Undressed is on at the Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin from 2nd June to 19th November 2017
