The artist’s portraits of young children highlight the attention to detail, composition and color that characterize much of classical painting. In fact, she is a painter by training -influenced by Old Masters such as Diego Velázquez, Agnolo Bronzino, Philipp Otto Runge, Francisco Goya- and is now employing digital photography to create portraiture. Lux imperceptibly manipulates her photographic images, creating a bewildering space that seduces the viewer to explore every inch of the surface.

In the pastel-colored photographs, her flawless, pale doll-like subjects are dressed in vintage period clothing, and inhabit what seems to be a dreamlike world. Her apparent hyper-perfection is met with a harmony, and demands deeper investigation by causing an uncomfortable state of wonder. In the estranged context of the photographs, her uncanny figures are isolated, as if not capable of establishing a relationship with the viewer.

Born in 1969 in Dresden, Germany, Loretta Lux studied painting in Munich at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, from 1990 to 1996. Various solo exhibitions of her work were held in New York at Yossi Milo Gallery, in The Hague at the Hague Museum of Photography, and in Amsterdam at Torch Gallery. She received the Bayerischer Kunst foerderpreis in 2002 and The International Centre of Photography’s Infinity Award for Art in 2005.

Loretta Lux, Photographs, galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan, September 9th-October 31st 2010