River Dillon uses superimposed images to create his photo compositions, taking the negative of a cactus or thistle and laying it over the negative of his model. The subsequent image is a combination of these two worlds that transforms dream boys into monsters.

Thornmen have a fatal beauty’s power of seduction but will hurt anyone who comes near.

The show at Wallywoods Gallery also features a new angle in Dillon’s work, with men merged with metal spikes, inspired by Berlin’s SM, gothic and punk scenes.

The artist also realized a serie of diptyques. The portrait of a man next to the image of a spiky plant so that the spectator associates the danger and aggressivity of the cactus with the poisonous power of the male.

River Dillon will also present Birdmen and Snakemen. He superimposes zooms on stuffed birds feathers with portraits of aerial Adonis to give a contemporary face to the birdman myth. The superimposition technique with two negatives gives to these young men a feather skin, a strange plumage encrusted on the surface of their body. River Dillon also photographed a collection of pre-Columbian ritual feather objects, a cap and five fabrics entirely covered with feathers.

If the man can be a wolf to another man, he is hopefully a changing animal: one day a predatory snake searching by all means to fulfil his desires, the next day a birdman, aerial poet who dreams and wishes to fly.

Curators: Jörg Leidig, River Dillon