BILL HENSON (B. 1955), CB8 SH5 N24, 1999-2000

BILL HENSON (B. 1955)
CB8 SH5 N24, 1999-2000
color coupler print
signed, titled and numbered '2/5' in ink (margin)
image: 41 x 60 5/8 in. (104 x 154 cm.)
sheet: 46 7/8 x 66 ½ in. (119 x 169 cm.)
This work is number two from the sold-out edition of five.

Pre-Lot Text
‘I often say it’s what goes missing in the shadows that animates the speculative capacity. It is not reality, it is complete construction.’ Bill Henson
Steeped in chiaroscuro, Bill Henson’s large-scale work CB8 SH5 N24, 1999-2000, exemplifies the Australian photographer’s theatrical, beautiful and vulnerable renderings of the human subject. Henson produces powerful photographs that are doused in drama and laden with raw emotional force. Through employing techniques such as overexposure and adjustment in the printing process, he creates an intense play of light and shadow in his photographs. Beyond mere documentary, Henson’s photographs move the mind to the more tangible and formal qualities of painting, evoking Titian, Rembrandt and Vermeer, and, in his ‘cut-screen’ works, the modernist stance of American painters Richard Diebenkorn or Clyfford Still. One of the great recurring themes explored in Henson’s prolific oeuvre is what he calls ‘the floating world’ of puberty and adolescence (B. Henson quoted in A. Jasper, ‘Controversy in Sydney, Frieze, May 2008). Often provocative, highly empathetic, and deeply psychological, Henson’s photographs of this transitional phase of life are imbued with a rumbling undercurrent of expectation and uncertainty.