Building Bridges Art Foundation Presents A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

On public view from April 22nd to May 17th, Building Bridges Art Foundation (BBAX) presents A History of Violence, a solo exhibition of artwork by award winning visual artist and photographer Melanie Pullen.

"A History of Violence" is a culmination of Melanie Pullen's photographic series spanning nearly two decades: This exhibition will have select pieces from Pullen's various series. Her most notable series are High Fashion Crime Scenes and Violent Times.

For this exhibtion A History of Violence "Pullen presents a selection of artworks created from 2003 onward, which are at the crossroads of beauty, fashion and violence," said curator Marisa Caichiolo. "She forces viewers to question our society's desire to glamorize violence."

Pullen's artwork simultaneously examines and criticizes the way entertainment and the media have diminished the nature of violence, trauma and social conflict by producing highly stylized and glamorized interpretations of humanity's trials and tribulations.

In her words: "The aim of my work is to take the viewer on a journey, to manipulate ones senses. As one views it: you at first take note of vivid colors, the shiny red shoes, the beautiful model but ultimately after you walk away you realize you were actually looking at something violently disturbing... something real, something horrid. My work purposely pokes fun at the sensory exploitation employed by the media. I'm essentially painting the 'Pink Elephant' for you to stare at" -- Melanie Pullen

To create her series of photographs titled High Fashion Crime Scenes, Pullen worked for over a decade with the NYPD, LAPD, and the coroner to gain unlimited access to their extensive crime archives. After mining through thousands of death scenes for the most impactful images: she subsequently treated each crime-recreation like a movie shoot: Pullen hired famous actresses and fashion models to pose in the exact positions of the victims, hired makeup artists, film crews, lighting experts and worked with the top fashion houses (Prada, Fendi, Chanel, Rodarte). Pullen's photo shoots often consisted of crews of more than fifty people and many millions of dollars in clothing donated by fashion houses.

The resulting tableaux are wildly-vivid and hyper-sexualized recreations of violent scenes.

The juxtaposition of violence and cinematic beauty, seen thematically in her work, becomes yet more evident in her war series titled Violent Times.

Pullen's "Violent Times" series recreates historic battle-scenes in her signature cinematic tableaux. To bring them to life, Pullen closed down the streets of Los Angeles, used weapons, war machines, tanks and helicopters.

For one of the most iconic images, she even had a movie studio build large areas of the city of Berlin, a task that took six months to complete. To create the illusion of timelessness, she used light manipulation and painted the film by hand during post-production.

Pullen said "my goal with this series was to create images that bring to mind the opera of war... images that take aim at society's glamorization of violence." Pullen is also addressing that for more than a century models were employed for painting battles scenes ultimately to sensationalize war.

Given the size of the portraits, the extent of the production and costuming, it took Pullen nearly a decade to finish "Violent Times". For this series she had assistance from The Smithsonian Institute, which allowed her special access to their rarely seen war archives for her in depth research.

About Melanie Pullen

Melanie Pullen was born in New York City in 1975. She is self-taught and was raised in a family of photojournalists, publishers and artists. Currently she lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She has exhibited her artwork internationally at many prestigious museums and galleries and her work is permanently housed in numerous prominent collections. She's had several books published on her work including her monograph High Fashion Crime Scenes published by Nazraeli Press.

In pop culture, Pullen's work has notably been the inspiration for videos by Lady Gaga and Kanye West. She has made artwork for several albums by Beck winning her the Yellow Pencil Award.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

APRIL 22nd-MAY 17th

Building Bridges Art Exchange (BBAX)

LOCATED IN BERGAMONT STATION

2525 Michigan Ave, Unit F2

Santa Monica, CA 90404

Regular Hours:

Tuesday to Friday from 11:30am to 5pm.

Saturdays - 12:00 noon to 6:30pm.