This artwork is a dynamic tableau showcasing a vivid fusion of fashion and visual art. It depicts three elegantly attired figures, draped in avant-garde costumes enriched with layers of bold colors—rust, black, and vibrant yellow. The left figure, poised on stacked platforms, embodies theatricality, with her flamboyant dress cascading in dramatic frills. Centrally, another figure in a striking yellow and black ensemble exudes classical sophistication while casually seated on a white chair. To the right, an elevated figure dons an opulent yellow hat and voluminous attire, creating a vertical emphasis against the muted backdrop. The setting is an artist's studio adorned with sketches and paintings, adding depth to the scene. Light floods in through large windows, illuminating the figures and creating contrast with the neutral walls. This composition uniquely blends elements of fashion, performance, and fine art, evoking a world where movement and artistry coexist seamlessly.
This of one of a kind intervened artworks produced in 2009 and 2010 marks Isaza's artistic shift from traditional fashion photography into fine art. It was at this time that Isaza began to explore beyond the camera lens through the process of applying physical interventions onto his printed images - using paint, crayon, tape, graphite, and other such unconventional materials. This process gave him an avenue to explore photography to a larger developed scale, giving space for his female subjects to be depicted with more of a sense of grandeur.
Haute Color Yellow Dress, 2009
Haute Color Yellow Dress, 2009
Archival pigment print Metal, Paint, Ink, Pencil.
Dimensions: 23.75 H x 38 W in.
Unique
Signed, titled, dated, and annotated in pencil on the reverse, and is in overall excellent condition.
Acquired from the photographer's studio, in 2011
Efren Isaza, one of Colombia’s most influential fashion photographers, initially studied fashion design. He united his interest in fashion with one of his earliest passions: photography. Graceful female figures lounge in fashionable poses. Paper costumes that seem borrowed from Oskar Schlemmer’s triadic ballet make the ballerinas look like marionettes.
Their dislocation recalls the puppets Hans Bellmer featured in his surreal photographic experiments. Frida Kahlo’s face with her dark, furrowed eyebrows, peers at the viewer out of different scenes; her hair is knotted artfully on her head.The allusions evoked in the imaginative creations of Colombian Fashion photographer Isaza are diverse: he cites and alienates an arsenal of styles before melding them into new compositions OF ONE OF A KIND LIMITED EDITION ARTWORK. It might be a certain scene, a poem, a petal of a flower, or the idea of a person that inspires a new work. His passion for breaking the boundaries of traditional fashion photography is palpable in each of Isaza’s unique works. He is less concerned with fashion than the image, the play of contrasts and the magic and the emotions sometimes saturnine,sometimes buoyant, sometimes surreal, and yet always beguiling that the image transports.
