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MARTIN SCHOELLER’S ‘NEW WORK’ TO OPEN JAN. 8 AT HASTED HUNT

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NEW YORK CITY — Hasted Hunt announces “Martin Schoeller — ‘New Work,’” an exhibition of large format photographic portraits on view January 8–February 23. An opening reception for the artist will be Thursday, January 10, from 6 to 8 pm.

With “New Work,” Schoeller has added to the series premiered in “Close Up,” his Hasted Hunt debut in 2006 and book of the same title from Te Neues, 2005. “New Work” will include his color and black and white work, which has not been exhibited on the East Coast before, large tightly cropped faces ranging in personalities from celebrities, athletes, musicians and politicians to members of his family and nonfamous individuals.

The artist intends to keep adding to this body of work in the next several years. His distinctive style combines a strict methodology with an ability to get his subjects to actively collaborate with him, fully energizing these portraits. New to the series are celebrities such as actors George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro, Will Ferrell, Helen Mirren and Judi Dench, as well as Henry Kissinger and Michael Jordan.

The exhibition debuts a specially commissioned group of members from the Amazonian Piraha tribe — striking, mysterious faces of the rarely photographed Piraha people, an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe that lives primarily on the banks of the Maici River in Brazil. Currently numbered at approximately 360, the culture is in grave danger of extinction. These photographs were commissioned by The New Yorker.

In the past two years, Schoeller’s work has been acquired and exhibited by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and he has had exhibitions in Boston, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Milan and Berlin. He continues to work as a contract photographer for The New Yorker and plans to exhibit his series on female body builders in 2008.

The gallery is at 529 West 20th Street, Third Floor. For information, 212-627-0006 or www.hastedhunt.com.