VIENNA, AUSTRIA.- KunstHausWien is pleased to present the first retrospective exhibition of Bettina Rheims in Austria - in cooperation with Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris. On show will be 143 photographs, assembled from the series: Female Trouble, Modern Lovers, Chambre Close, Les Espionnes, Kim Harlow, Les Aveugles, I.N.R.I., X’mas, Morceaux choisis, Porquoi m’ as-tu abandonnée? and Shanghai.

Bettina Rheims’ prime subject is glamour. Not sentiment, not nostalgia, and – though it can be a useful element – not even beauty. Just pure glamour, which has little to do with fame or celebrity, even though Claudia Schiffer, Kylie Minogue, Angelina Jolie, and Madonna make cameo appearances in her staged photographs. Their images are no more or less special than those of the nameless temptresses, seductresses, strippers, shop-girls, and models in garter belts or lingerie. Sexy nudes, glamorous transsexuals, boudoir semi-nudes in poses of mock-abandon, and portraits of naughty ingenues with perfectly glistening flesh share equally in her fictive portraits and scenes. Overly red lipstick and a dangling cigarette are more overt elements of image construction than a recognizable name, because what is at the core of these pictures is always an awareness of the creation of an illusion, for that’s what glamour is. If a woman in a red dress pouring ketchup onto her plate seems a star of the first order, it’s only because her glamour comes through so effortlessly.

Bettina Rheims’ images manage to transcend the limits and strictures of fixed identity. Having probed the nature of this species of image since before its art-theory ascendance and decline, she has been adding to her image bank of variables, expanding on the repertoire.