Ari Marcopoulos

Copenhagen

Ari Marcopoulos arrived in New York from the Netherlands in 1979, and started taking pictures. He documented the relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, making some of the last images seen of both. He recorded the legendary downtown skateboarding scene in ʼ90s New York from the street, making some of the first images ever seen of, among others, the teenaged Harold Hunter and Justin Pierce.

Marcopoulosʼ practice these days is very much about what he sees on a daily basis. Composing and distributing work in the form of publications is a constant part of his public output, so the most recent work is always what is focused on. In Here and Now he wanted to just show his work from 2012, and most of the prints, as can be seen from the date stamp in the lower-right hand corners, are from March this year. He still works on film, so there is some separation between the time the photo is taken and the time the result is seen. So much imagemaking now only exists on a held-hand device or only disseminated electronically. Here and Now contains an image of Tyson Chandler, the center of the NY Knicks basketball team, on the court at Madison Square Garden. Marcopoulos has access to Chandler, but instead took a picture anyone could take at a public event. This image crystallizes the idea behind the show: everything is squarely photographed as is, without much consideration for emotion or compositional guidelines. Here and Now is a selection of 23 recent color works. V1 Gallery is additionally showing a selection of older works, putting the new work in perspective and introducing a bit of history. Among the older works are a portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a self-portrait
with the actor and skater Justin Pierce, a group of street photos, and a large collage of contact sheets from Marcopoulosʼ seminal ʼ90s New York skateboarding series.

V1 Gallery

April 28th – May 19th, 2012
Flæsketorvet 69 – 71
1711 Copenhagen V
Denmark

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