JR's first solo show at Lazarides, '28 Millimetres: WOMEN.' Including new originals and a site specific installation.

Until November 14th, free entrance.

The show will take place in both the Greek Street and Charing Cross galleries and in the surrounding streets.

8 Greek Street,
Soho,
London W1D 4DG

125 Charing Cross Rd,
London WC2H 0EW

'28 Millimetres: WOMEN.'

"‘28 Millimetres: WOMEN’ is French photographer JR’s act of mass matriarchal portraiture, with this portion of his ongoing project hailing from a particularly rough ghetto in Rio de Janeiro. After soldiers shot dead three young favela dwellers in Morro da Providência, JR trained his lens on the female folk there, you might think to capture looks of defiance and stoicism in the face of violence, but actually most of them come across as slightly gurning old ladies, or girls mugging for the camera with puffed-out cheeks. Perhaps their slightly comic nature is designed to foreground the triumph of human spirit over adversity or some such clichéd nonsense, but in practice these dashes of personality do make each portrait seem engaging, alive and that bit more bearable than your average Benetton advert.

Focus then, not on the individual, but on the blur of hundreds of his close-up, near forensic black-and-white portraits that line the gallery like wallpaper. This commercial application is wholly appropriate for an artist who spends most of his time on the street and up a ladder, pasting enormous blown-up versions of his characterful mugs on to the sides of buildings. The favela was no different, as a slick artistic documentary takes you through the homes of his photographic subjects, whose eyes were then plastered all over the hillside as though the inhabitants were now keeping watch over their own neighbourhood. Absolutely amazing and deeply moving: a must see.

JR’s architectural oversizing of imagery is undeniably impressive and is worth leaving the Charing Cross Road gallery for. He’s plastered the side of bookshop Foyles with more of his trademark figures, where it’s possible to appreciate how the initial queasiness of single portraits dissolves when magnified. It’s replaced by a powerful social message of urban ownership and citizenship, of what it means to live and be part of the city’s very fabric. It’s the outdoor work that makes JR at all interesting to look at, so don’t begrudge him the necessary complicité of his more sellable pieces in the nearby Greek Street gallery."