Michael Weinstein

Burlesque marks the point in Western erotic culture where mockery and seduction meet to create ironic desire. The accent is firmly on irony in Finnish-German photographer Katharina Bosse's saturated color portraits of American burlesque queens transported in their costumes from the stage to ordinary places where they strut their stuff for us in studied poses. For all of their lushness, Bosse's images work because of the incongruity between her subjects and their environments like back porches, sidewalks, fields and parking lots. The voyeuristic gaze is thwarted by the realization that if the viewer were present in the flesh at these scenes, passionate appreciation would dissolve in an overwhelming sense of grotesquerie. By depriving her subjects of their milieu, Bosse has made them into attractive clowns who are more humorous than tantalizing, a burlesque of burlesque.

"New Burlesque" is showing at Alan Koppel Gallery, 210 West Chicago, (312)640-0730, through January 11.

(2003-01-02)

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