OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, March 29, 2025 | FWADA SPRING GALLERY NIGHT 12:00 – 9:00 PM
EXHIBITION ON VIEW: March 29 – MAy 10, 2025
Enigma, an exhibition of new works by internationally acclaimed artist Maxine Helfman, will be on display March 29 through May 10 at William Campbell Gallery. The gallery will host an opening event on FWADA Spring Gallery Night, Saturday, March 29, at its new location, 217 Foch Street. The gallery will be open from noon until 9:00 p.m., and guests can meet the artist during the evening reception, starting at 6:00 p.m.
Enigma includes images from several of Helfman’s series incorporating elements of portraiture, still life, and collage to create striking vignettes that are at once familiar and unknown. In addition to these, Helfman will exhibit for the first time pieces from her newest endeavor exploring lenticular collages. These freestanding collages, comprised of multifaceted layers of visual information, add a new level of dynamism to Helfman’s body of work.
Inspired by her lived experiences, humanity’s collective history, and random occurrences, Helfman describes her images as “a consensus of everything I take in.” To that end, she uses found objects, fabrics, and wardrobe to create open-ended, visually evocative narratives that defy any one place or time. In doing so, Helfman invites viewers to contemplate each layer and every detail as they observe her images from their own point of view.
An artist forever fascinated by portraiture, Helfman seeks out live models for her images. As she works with them over fifteen to twenty sessions, the artist transforms her subjects into iconic protagonists embodying visual stories yet to be told. Such a transformation manifests as Helfman works—usually in unanticipated ways. “I just shoot,” she says. “I don’t stop. I don’t analyze it. It’s a wonderfully random process.”
The resulting works are indeed enigmatic. Helfman’s studies in figure, line, color, and texture exist outside of a prescribed time and space, fusing together objects simultaneously related and disparate, each one constructing its own storyline amid an atmosphere of soft tension wrapped in intrigue.
“You don’t have to have an answer for it,” Helfman says of her work. She encourages viewers to make their own decisions when looking at her images—to consider, process, and absorb the work in a way that makes it meaningful to them. “It is ultimately the viewer, through their personal experience and memories, that weaves together the stories.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Maxine Helfman began her early career as a commercial photographer. Her years as a highly regarded stylist and art director in a highly competitive field led to the development of her unique vision in fine art photography. She began to notice a shift in her vision that drew her away from concerns with peripheral aesthetics in addition to an interest in getting behind the camera to explore her passion for capturing a scene through her artistic lens. This newfound spontaneity offered her an aesthetic freedom where she could experiment with the dynamism of her subjects placed in tableaus challenging cultural norms of sex, race, power, and gender. Whether exploring such themes as the sacred or profane, Helfman’s images embody an array of formal qualities drawn directly from historical paintings, sculptures, and films.
To date, Helfman has exhibited her artwork in numerous venues nationally and internationally, in New York City, Bangkok, Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Paris, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Art spaces include the Dallas Art Fair, the RISD Museum in Rhode Island, Monticello, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Galerie Vu Paris, and Germany’s Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Kurpfalzisches Museum Heidelberg, among many others. Her work is in the permanent collections of Mount Vernon, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Minnesota’s Tweed Museum of Art, the RISD Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. International collections include the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart collection and the Sir Elton John Photography Collection.
Helfman’s work has appeared in such publications as Flaunt, Juxtapoz, Patron, Vice, and Zoom magazines; The Art Newspaper; the British Journal of Photography; The Telegraph (UK); Huffington Post; and on CNN. Her long list of professional recognition includes awards from Critical Mass, the International Photography Awards, Lensculture, the Lucie Awards, Photo DC, PX3, and American Photography, to name a few.
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