Linda Troeller, The Chelsea Years
December 10, 2015 – January 30, 2016
Opening: Saturday Dec 12, 6-10pm
Coup D’oeil Art Consortium hosts the kick off book signing for “Living in the Chelsea Hotel” along with a retrospective exhibition of Linda Troeller’s images from this book, Self-Portraits and Healing
Waters (Aperture 1998). Curated by Ken and Laura Capone, Gallerists.
Built in 1883, the Hotel Chelsea, on 23rd Street in New York City, quickly became the most famous and notorious hotel in the world. From day one, it has been a center of artistic and bohemian activity, with notable residents like actor Ethan Hawke, painter Phillip Taaffe, magazine editor Sally Singer, filmmaker Milos Forman, poet and painter Rene Ricard, beat poet Herbert Huncke, and novelist Joseph O’Neill. This photographic collage of 76 images and vignettes was gathered by longtime hotel resident, Linda Troeller, prior to the hotel’s restoration under new ownership. It unpacks suitcases of memories with atmospheric photographs of residents and guests from the past 20 years. As the author notes, “Life at the Chelsea Hotel arrived in fragments, signs, things heard, and things felt, rather than chronologically charted.” Schiffer Publishing 2015.
Bio
Linda Troeller is an award-winning photographer from New York City acclaimed for her many exhibitions about living at the legendary Chelsea Hotel. She exhibited at the F/Stop Photography Festival in Leipzig, Germany, University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and the Melkweg Gallery and Coda Museum, Netherlands. She won Pictures of the Year Pictorial and published Healing Waters (Aperture) and Spa Journeys (powerHouse Books). She co-authored, with Marion Schneider, Erotic Lives of Women (Scalo) and Orgasm: Photographs and Interviews (Daylight). The University of Texas, Austin, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Smithsonian Museum have collected her work. She exhibited Self-Portrayal at the Ververs Gallery, Amsterdam, and won an IPA Award in 2009 for “Self-Portraiture.” A documentary, “Inside the Frame: Linda Troeller,” was released in 2015 by Canadian filmmaker Jeff McKay.
