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Wednesday 31 March 2010

Jenny Shimizu is on Twitter

It's not (yet) a verified Twitter account, but you can be pretty sure it is the real deal.


Friday 26 March 2010

American Beauty

Date: May 2008
Publication: Audrey Magazine
Author: Paul Nakayama


The Ducati-riding, tattoo-bearing ’90s beauty icon may seem intimidating, but as Paul Nakayama discovers, there’s definitely something about Jenny Shimizu that's hard to resist.




It’s a brisk Sunday afternoon, and I’m sitting nervously at the Casbah CafĂ© in Silver Lake, a hip part of Los Angeles, Calif., waiting for Jenny Shimizu to arrive. 


I’m nervous because I was told that Jenny can be intimidating, and the last thing I need is to ask the wrong thing and get my ass trounced by a supermodel. 


Before I could hightail it out of there, I see Jenny just as she steps through the doorway and removes her motorcycle helmet, revealing medium-length hair. I was sort of expecting her signature buzz cut, but she is wearing her motorcycle leathers. I sheepishly raise my hand, and I’m surprised to find her beaming with a smile and waving back.


While she’s getting tea and settling in, I take the opportunity to study her. There’s something about her that strikes me, and it’s not just her elfin features. I decide to reserve describing her for now.


While I remember the famous Calvin Klein ads in the ’90s where Jenny with close-cropped hair is dressed in a white tank top, jeans and tattoos everywhere else, I didn’t know much else about her. She humors my amateur attempts at research, and we talk about her childhood.

Tuesday 23 March 2010

Catherine Opie's 'Girlfriends'

All together, “Girlfriends” shows Opie continuing to explore the hidden territories behind constructed facades. Looking at her pictures can be uncomfortable, not because of their confrontational content but because they reveal as much about the beholder as the beheld.
( via )

I'm quite fond of this sweet, portraiture-driven exhibition. Opie's new body of work, portraits of friends and lovers of the 'butch-dyke' persona, is elevated by an array of square-format b&w prints from her archive, never before printed before now. The latter acts almost diary-like, recalling Opie's ties to the S&M community in LA and San Francisco from the early '90s, and some of its subjects (like the riveting Pig Pen) recur in the new series, nearly 15 years later. Among the portraits include a regal k.d. lang against a Canadian wilderness, Jenny Shimizu in leather on a pristine white-sheeted bed and Idexa, tattooed and barechested, crouching on a rock. But I kept going back to Pig Pen, from her almost waifish figure in '94, wearing a play-piercing 'crown of thorns' for a performance in Mexico City, to her tanned, mature figure in '09, a thorn-wrapped heart tattoo emblazoned on her chest. ( via )

“Girlfriends” is on view in New York City until 24 April 2010 at Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street.

More on this here and here.