installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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Ginamarie and Annamarie in the TV room, 2012
digital c-print, courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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LOL, 2012
digital c-print, courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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Mostly known for his contributions to fashion magazines such as Vogue Paris and Dazed & Confused, as well as his many fashion campaigns, ranging from Carven to Opening Ceremony, American photographer MAX FARAGO recently opened his new solo exhibition at Jonathan Viner Gallery in London, which is just as strange and unusual.

Shot in Los Angeles, this new work portrays nuances between reality and fantasy, narrating the underlying drives of LA’ cultural environment, in an world fabricating desires and expectations.

The photos of ‘Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley’ look real, feel fake, feel real, look fake. How they look and how they feel are the realest things about them. They document ambiguous incidents in semi-staged narratives, with sort-of actors and sort-of models sort-of acting and sort-of modelling. They are about family and friendship and youth and age and sex and death. – Jonathan Viner Gallery

The result is extremely well constructed and blurs the line between art and commerce, but that is true of so much photography today, especially in fashion, where almost any image could pass for an ad, while ads can be indistinguishable from conceptual art. This exhibition proves to be disconcerting, captivating, and curious in equal measure.

Inspired by real life and partly by fake life, MAX’s photographs mockument a world which, although semi-staged, feels intensely real and overfamiliar. Through a process of assemblage, these images create a sense of coherence, tension and complicity, and reveal new meanings. – ELOISE MORAN

And good news: Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley is currently on view at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London until April 13, 2013

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