Spoiler: Steven Klein about Madonna
Warning: contains spoiler informations about Madonna’s Re-invention tour.
“In a grimly lit video-editing bay on West 18th Street, Steven Klein is hovering above proofs of his most recent photographs of Brad Pitt as flames that Klein has created for Madonna flicker on a nearby monitor.
The editing bay, stocked with computer-generated-imaging hardware that’s churning through the billions of ones and zeroes that will add up to the video backdrop for Madonna’s upcoming tour, hums ominously.
“This is a CGI animation,” Klein says, pointing to a corner of one flaming screen that will debut in front of a live audience when the tour kicks off on May 24. “It’s not real. This back area is made up of, like, five different pieces assembled together.” The work – which will be projected onto massive, multistory screens at Madison Square Garden and other venues – is a dramatically expanded outgrowth of Klein’s 2003 Deitch gallery installation, titled “X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS.”
That show featured twitchy images of Madonna in unlikely, revealing yogic poses, all taken in stark interiors. “These layers are going to make the whole piece,” he continues. “It’s going to be like a moving painting, in a way.”
Madonna, a frequent collaborator of Klein’s, e-mails in to say that she considers him to be “an artist, not a fashion photographer,” but Klein insists, “I never consider what I do art. I never will, never will.”