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Txema Yeste

Spanish, b. 1972
(untitled), 2023
Archival Pigment Print.
20 x 24 in / 50 × 60 cm
30 x 40 in / 76 × 101 cm
40 x 60 in / 101 x 152 cm
59 x 76 3/4 in / 150 x 195 cm
Hand-signed by artist, mounted, titled, editioned and print date in ink label affixed to mount verso
Edition of 5 — 20 x 24 in / 50 × 60 cm
Edition of 5 — 30 x 40 in / 76 × 101 cm
Edition of 3 — 40 x 60 in / 101 x 152 cm
Edition of 1 — 59 x 76 3/4 in / 150 x 195 cm
© The Artist

She clasps the tree the way you might hold onto a partner mid-dance, arms crossed over the rough bark, hands locked, one booted foot hooked onto a root. It is an embrace and a brace at once, tender and athletic. Yeste shoots her in black and white, nude but for tall leather riding boots, her cropped platinum hair catching the flat outdoor light. She turns her face to the camera with a look that gives nothing away, level, amused, entirely in charge of the exchange.

The setup is pure fashion mischief: strip away everything except the boots and the attitude, then plant it outdoors against a big spreading trunk and a field going soft toward the horizon. It should read as provocation and instead reads as poise. The muscled roots fan out beneath her like a stage she has commandeered; the leaves at the upper corner and the pale washed sky keep it pastoral, almost English, a country weekend with the clothes forgotten. Every line, the bent knee, the arched back, the gripping fingers, has been tuned.

Yeste is a leading name in Spanish fashion photography, a fixture in Numéro, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, as fluent in this grayscale nude as in his saturated color work. Here he trades spectacle for something drier and more classical, the body and the tree given equal billing, both textured, both weathered. The archival pigment print carries the full range from the sooty boots to the near-white sky without losing the grain of the bark. It is a picture that flirts and keeps its composure, which is the hardest trick of all.

(untitled)