Wotsit All About

This is a photograph by James Ostrer exhibited at LagosPhoto Festival 2015.

James Ostrer’s work often tests the limits of body politics in the ever evolving analysis of the western body, sexuality, and society at large.

Much like Paul McCarthy’s or George Condo’s seminal works, Ostrer's work forms a bizarre pattern of post capitalist tribalism with cartoon-like absurdity. They are rife with a sense of ritual endeavor and colour-saturated sensitivity; while palpitating with a nostalgia for various ephemera including junk food and animal parts they present themselves with an emphasis on the potential havoc the over consumption of these things wreak within our collective life experience. His works are often a catalogue of self- destructive behaviors, and are also managed in such a way that while transgressing themselves as odes to great works of historical art practice, they become re-packaged eye candy for uncomfortable consumption.

Guru Jimmy has often played a large part in Ostrer's creative process. James describes him as, "a life saving friend who is a spiritually connected amplifier of positive thinking and happiness that pushes me on a continuous journey of selfl-discovery and learning"

In 2009, Ostrer staged “Customer Container”; an installation in which the artist used photographs of himself taken by six different prostitutes under which the only condition was that they order him to perform as they wished. In 2011, his portrait of Nicky Haslam in Lucien Freud’s chair was “Curator’s choice” for the Taylor Wessing exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. The artist lives and works between London, New York and LA.