Fine Art nominee

Kelly William Wright
Theater of Twisted Vanities
A self portrait series with artist serving as model.

Theater of Twisted Vanities explores the human figure veiled in wet silk and suspended between revelation and distortion. Bodies emerge through translucent fabrics that simultaneously clothe, bind, obscure, and transform. Sepia toning and circular vignettes evoke antique viewing devices, inviting the audience into a psychological spectacle where beauty bends toward myth, sanctity, monstrosity, and decay.

The works are created through practical means — water, gravity, fabric, and light — without digital manipulation. Several images function as self-portraits, extending the inquiry into self-image and the fragile architecture of identity.

Rather than presenting the nude as object, the series destabilizes vanity itself. The body becomes an atmospheric vessel onto which the viewer projects archetype, fear, reverence, and desire.

Kelly William Wright is an American photographic artist and gallerist based in Tampa, Florida. Collected internationally over 3 decades, his artistic career has spanned 50 years with a diverse body of work traversing the modern evolutions of the photographic industry. During the late 1990's and early 2000's Kelly's is work was represented by numerous galleries in the eastern United States including the Lawrence Charles Galleries of New York, Miami and Tampa. His last solo exhibition was in 2009 in Tampa, Florida entitled "21 Works From Beyond the Hill" which consisted of 21 large scale photographic artworks ranging in subject from nudes to abstract.

In late 2009, Wright began what would turn into a 9 year hiatus from his active creative work to develop his growing commercial gallery business (specializing in collectible and investment grade vintage photographs). In 2018 Wright returned to his creative work with a renewed intensity culminating in new work and multiple ongoing projects.