Jeremy Kost is known on the New York circuit as "the Polaroid artist." While the digital wave continues to gather force in contemporary art, Kost creates art with his tried and true Polaroid cameras. Because famous persons, including Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, embrace his creative methods, Kost has direct access to their relaxed environments. The artist exposes the reality of celebrities and the fashion and art elite in compelling, unstaged Polaroid photographs. Influenced by Andy Warhol, he also finds inspiration in underground scenes of the East Village and the Lower East Side. The artist responds spontaneously and directly to whatever this eclectic, gritty world presents him. Instead of relying on lighting, make-up, or styling, he seizes upon the integrity of the moment. Whether his shots convey the energy of a hedonistic smile, or the honest look of true exhaustion, Kost's art reveals the character of his subjects with uncompromising immediacy. |
 |
Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall Beauty and poise in all of their many guises are ever-present in the photgraphs of Jeremy Kost. So, too, are their polar opposites--those traits that they long to cover, eradicate or de¥ ect--ugliness and insecurity. The two binarisms go hand-in-hand, much like a dark queen peering into her mirror and questioning the perceived beauty of her re¥ ection, the delicate poise she has practiced again and again. And in Jeremy KostÕs Polaroids that capture the underworld of New York City's club scene, the "other" world of fame and celebrity, and indeed, the exalted world of beatiful go-go boys and sideshow freaks, the queen in the image is not necessarily that of Walt Disney's doing, but instead an outlandish persona who represents the beauty and ugliness in us all. KostÕs Polaroids become the ultimate Warholian mirror of that which we desire, that which we fear, and that which we will never be. And in just the same vein as Warhol, who rarely left home without his trusty Polaroid camera hung 'round his neck, Kost inhabits the realm of the modern day club kid, the glamorous drag queen, the young starlet and the rock n' roll jet setter as though he were one with them, no matter their stripes, no batter their extremes. As though a social chameleon flung off the wall, Kost melds with his surroundings by building trust with his subjects--telling them with a smile or a nod that they are indeed the most beautiful of all. The repertoire he builds with his chosen models presents itself in each intimate portrait that he captures with the push of a button. Whether a celebutante veiled in a puff of cigarette smoke or a drag queen checking her make-up in a compact mirror, the ¥ gures represented in Kost's photographs are real, yet at the same time completely ¥ ctional. They force us to question aspects of fantasy, privacy and facade. They force us to look into the mirror, and decide for ourselves who we are and who we want to be. They make us question our own beauty, at times con¥ rming our domi-nance, at others exposing our flaws.Jeremy Kost's powerful images, it seems, are the perfect conduit for these self-examinations. For him, beauty lies only in the eye of the Polaroider. |