Klompching Gallery is pleased to present A New Kind Of Beauty, by New York artist Phillip Toledano.

Brought together for the first time as a solo exhibition, these breathtaking and provocative portraits depict people who have reconfigured their bodies by means of extensive plastic surgery. The photographs raise questions about self-perception and social paragons relating to what constitutes perceived notions of beauty.

Shot against a stark black backdrop, the large-scale portraits present subjects that are stunningly rendered and isolated. Toledano’s highly-crafted images combine up-close physical observations that are imposing, detailed and display a dramatic illumination that is reminiscent of the chiaroscuro technique of Caravaggio.

Rather than presenting a study of physical augmentation that simply shows an apparent eradication of individuality via the surgeon’s knife, Toledano’s artistic achievement is the humanity that quietly projects from behind the faces of each subject—pride, hope, sadness, fear, awkwardness and defiance all abound.

Phillip Toledano (b. 1968) is a photographer living and working in New York City. Toledano’s work is primarily socio-political and varies in medium, from photography to installation. His work can found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston) and the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum. His work has been widely exhibited in the US, China, France, Singapore and Spain. His first book, Bankrupt, was published by Twin Palms in 2005 and was followed in 2008 by Phonesex. His most recent monograph, Days With My Father, was published in Spring 2010 to critical acclaim. Days With My Father is a visually sincere and moving memoir of Toledano’s life with his father, in the years prior to his father’s passing, and will form a solo exhibition at Gallery 339 (Philadelphia) in Fall 2010.