New Ed Templeton Book
July 21, 2008 – 12:12 am PT by MeTags: Deformer, Ed Templeton —
At one time just an innocent young boy with a bowl haircut, soon transformed into one of the skateboarding industry’s prominent art figures, Ed Templeton is documented in a new book.
If you’re a fan of skateboarding, art, nudity, or Orange County, you should really look into getting Templeton’s new book “Deformer” coming out this October. The book entails 30 years of priceless material. And although I haven’t seen a single page of this book, I’m sure it’s going to be loaded because I’ve loved his work since I was a little kid. The dude’s work makes me feel a little ill inside but ambiguously stimulated.
Almost like Harmony Korine’ s film about a small Midwest town, “Gummo”. So you should definitely check it out if you’re into that kind of stuff. In the meantime check out this description of “Deformer”.
In Deformer, artist Ed Templeton explores his upbringing in suburban Orange County, California through photographs, stories and ephemera from his youth and teen years, giving readers–as he did viewers of the short Mike Mills film of the same name–an intensely close and personal look at his coming of age. He weaves disciplinary letters from his grandfather and religious notes from his mother in with telling images and brutal stories, creating an unresolved narrative that offers more questions than answers. Or perhaps the answers are these photographs, paintings, drawings and sketchbook pages, which plunge readers headlong into not just Templeton’s chaotic existence, but also his use of art to address its stresses and joys.
Deformer is the culmination of a vision 11 years in the making, and collects over 30 years of material. Its photographs illuminate being young and alive in the “suburban domestic incubator,” and provide–in the tradition of Nan Goldin or Larry Clark, with a sharp eye for the streets that recalls Garry Winogrand or Eugene Richards–a raw and unflinching glimpse into the artist’s own life and the lives around him.
