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Txema Yeste

Spanish, b. 1972
Taste, 2021
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

Notice the tongue first — just the tip of it, painted the same lacquer red as the apple it reaches for, so that fruit and flesh rhyme across a half-inch of blue air. Everything in the picture funnels down to that contact not-quite-made: the woman bent double in silhouette, the red apple balanced on a shallow dish, the tongue extended like a held note. It is the smallest gesture and the entire plot.

The pose is pure performance, and Yeste stages it as choreography: the body folded into a taut zigzag of shin and thigh and lifted elbow, one hand cupping the far knee, the spine a long dark curve against a haze of teal and drifting green leaves. A green sequined top throws off the only sparkle in the frame. Above the brow, a slim red wire loops up like a stray thought or a halo mislaid. She is Eve, obviously, but an Eve who knows she’s being photographed and plays to it.

Yeste has spent a career at the glossy end of this — Numéro, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue — and he brings the fashion editor’s instinct for a single unforgettable image to what is, underneath, a very old story about appetite. The restraint is what sells it: no bite taken, no juice, just the anticipation before. As an archival pigment print the reds stay jewel-hard against those cool blues, the sequins keep their glitter, and the deep silhouette holds its detail rather than collapsing into a blot. A picture that makes you lean in, then makes you wait.

Taste