Images of great beauty and poignancy are photographic artist Jeffrey Sklan’s call to action against violence and mass shootings. With ELEGY, he offers a visually stunning exhibition focused on botanical images. This radiant and transformative collection is his way of paying tribute to lives lost in mass killings and murders; but viewers unaware of the context will experience elegant, perfect images of flowers with a rich and deep color palette.
Opening Saturday, June 22nd at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, Sklan’s inspiring works expand the boundaries of photographic still life with lush and evocative depictions of natural beauty. In each image, he draws viewers into the singular world that his artwork represents.
First on view at Photo LA in January, the series draws from the solace he finds in the beauty of lilies, as well as the poignant reality of their all-too-short existence, and traditional use in memorials for the departed.
Sadly, several new images have been created since his debut exhibition, including those dedicated to Parkland student Sydney Aiello, Nipsey Hussle, celebrants of both Easter in Sri Lanka, and Passover in Poway, California.
Sklan transforms and translates natural forms in a moving collaborative dance between the perfect beauty of flowers and their fragility; their loveliness serving as an evocative rumination on the briefness of our blossoming on earth, and how quickly that beauty can be lost.
The initial image in this body of work, “Lily for Orlando,” was “literally created as the crime scene from the Pulse Nightclub was playing out. A black lily on green background resulted. It was June 2016 and there was no intention of it being anything but a one-off,” Sklan explains. But in July of 2016, 87 people were killed celebrating Bastille Day in Nice. “The enormity of it resulted in another image. And that was that – a project took form,” he relates.
There is a strong spiritual component to his work that seems to emanate from within it – a ribbon of light, a moment of solitude, the sense of longing for connection – to life, to beauty, to being.
He describes his most successful images as capturing emotional content sparking a visceral reaction, and reflecting what the artist was feeling or thinking, as the shutter released. “I am seeking to memorialize the essence of what is before me.”
His resonant color palette originated with his admiration for artists such as Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian, and Caravaggio. This inspiration seems to infuse his work with a classic, grand beauty, as Sklan creates depths to his work filled with an inner light.
These graceful, precise images serve as an ultimate homage to those who have been taken prematurely.
The exhibition was designed as a traveling show, and Sklan hopes ELEGY will find new venues for future exhibitions. To defray the shipping and installation costs, limited edition fine art prints are for sale so that “even more people can view it, and, ideally, be inspired to remedy the wrongs they perceive in the communities where they live.” He notes “The message is simple: we are each, in our own way and according to our capacity, capable of affecting change.
Subtle and somber visions of fragile, exquisite loveliness, the artist’s images compel us to appreciate the transitory beauty of our world and our lives.
In short, Sklan has captured beauty in mourning, and offers an affirmation of life, even after that life itself has slipped away.
Experience his ELEGY June 22-27 at Kopeikin Gallery, 2766 La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles.