Happy Birthday Louise Parker is the first solo exhibition in Italy by the American photographer Roe Ethridge (Miami, 1969) curated by Alessandro Rabottini. Of the language of photography, Ethridge explores historical implications and contemporary paradoxes, seamlessly navigating the realms of visual art and fashion photography through a distinctive and unconventional style.

Conceived especially for 10·Corso·Como, Happy Birthday Louise Parker brings together a selection of iconic photographs from the past 15 years alongside previously unreleased works, fusing themes and subjects that, at a first glance, may appear unrelated to each other: elaborate still lives, accurately staged fashion shots, melancholic landscapes, and intimate portraits. Images are skilfully juxtaposed to forge visual connections, unravel contrasts, and weave narratives, and despite the diversity of their atmospheres, what connects them all is a formal rigour that is as haunting as it is arresting, if not confrontational at times.

The exhibition draws its title from the alluring presence of Louise Parker, a model with whom Roe Ethridge collaborated with on the occasion of several fashion editorials starting from 2010. Throughout the years, the two became friends and Ethridge had the opportunity to portray Parker both inside and outside the framework of the fashion industry. We see the recurring, hypnotic image of Louise transitioning from highly stylised fashion spreads to more spontaneous, intimate portraits and back, manifesting the intertwining of life and representation, the everyday and the staged. In this collection of portraits, the gaze of the artist meets the self-aware gaze of the model, in a way that thematise and transcends the dynamic interplay between the photographer, the camera, and the subject, between the intentionality of the artistic vision and the intentionality of the pose.

Within this narrative in which Louise is present at different stages of her life - as an individual and as a model, as a woman and as a mother - Roe Ethridge inserts fragments of his own biography: a portrait of the artist together with his son at the age of 5 (Me and Auggie), his own sinked car salvaged from a muddy river in Belle Glade, the city in Florida where his mother grew up and where his parents met in High School (Durango in the Canal) , more recent portraits of his children taken during moments of leisure (Lee Lou at Sunset Park Ferry Terminal, Auggie with Racoon Tail), and a digitally manipulated portrait of the artist at his 52nd birthday party (Birthday Multiply), the result of the superimposition of two different images, one taken from his daughter.

Within this non-linear storytelling, the relation between personal memories and the realm of fashion is revealed through the nuanced connections established between the images when installed in the space: fashion, in fact, is an ever-evolving discipline where trends emerge, flourish, and fade, each season serving as a poignant reminder of the cyclical nature of life.

Exhibition details

Roe Ethridge – Happy Birthday Louise Parker
Curated by Alessandro Rabottini
10 Corso Como Gallery
21.02 – 5.04.2024
Daily: 10:30am – 7:30pm
Free admission

A hybrid and mobile cabinet of curiosity, the 10·Corso·Como Project Room hosts an editorial selection of rare volumes and international cult magazines. A meeting place for the creative and academic community, it is also a space where contemporary issues can be addressed, thanks to a selection of writings offering reflections on sustainability and human relations, and looking at the intersection of art, fashion and culture.

Available in store only.

“Make life a game”: so urged the Dutch sociologist Johan Huizinga in 1939 in his work Homo Ludens. His theory foresaw the passage from homo sapiens to homo ludens; in essence, the human being, freed thanks to the machine from the slavery of coercive labour, would finally dedicate himself to a ‘ludic’ existence, dedicated to recreational activities, cultural growth and play. That play that is to be understood as one of the highest psycho-cognitive expressions one can achieve.

Today we wonder whether the artifice of human ingenuity - be it artificial intelligence or technology - is really liberating us, leading us towards a more playful and happy existence, or whether it is just creating another degree of addiction. The fact remains that ‘play is a serious matter’, as great Italian designers such as Bruno Munari and Enzo Mari knew so well, who devoted so much of their design to objects that stimulate the mental exploration aptitudes of young and old alike.

This selection of objects, books, and furniture is an invitation to play, to do so in constant practice, as an expression of freedom and curiosity, as an activity dedicated to relationships with others and the search for our other selves. We may find that it is the best way to escape and find ourselves at the same time. Without winners or losers; just by putting ourselves out there.

Available in store only.