Red Carpet

“A group of photographs, taken in Los Angeles shows the red carpets used as the VIP walkway towards Hollywood’s Oscar ceremony as they are put out to dry after the ceremony. The colors seen in the photograph are the three primary colors of light – red, blue and green – which together produce white, or a ‘blank sheet,’ in line with Toister’s pursuit of models. Both the color model and the model of glamour manifested in Hollywood fantasies are seen through the prism of the tangible reality, which makes their existence possible yet is mostly invisible. This is the back side of fantasy: a red felt carpet being rolled out along a sheet of blue plastic by a stooped Mexican laborer, with green weeds in the background. In another series, taken in an ecological resort on one of the Fijian islands, workmen pushing oil barrels out of the sea are portrayed with a marked romantic aesthetic. In these excellent series, Toister presents the clash between a rationale and a concrete reality of life that it encounters, just as photography realizes its potential in the encounter with material reality – a reality which is often critical of the concept that gives it form.”
(Naama Haikin)