The Mr and Mrs of Addicted is beyond excited to introduce you to the dynamic Mr and Mrs photography duo, Formento & Formento. Formento & Formento are known for their romantic and stylish photographs that explore themes of love, loss, longing and the burden of memory.
Their inventive and stylised photography explores the uncanny and perverse, revealing double-edged allegories with underlying lyricism. Utilising conceptually playful staged scenes and desaturated colours, the duo's psychologically evocative, eerily sensual style reveals a fascination with fiction and reality through mood and texture.
Whether they are shooting in America, Europe, Cuba, Mexico, India or Japan, they blend fervent passion for photography and film with a lasting love for one another.
Richeille Formento styles and art directs, while BJ Formento lights and photographs. BJ is the light, Richeille is the pigment.
BJ was born in Hawaii and grew up in the Philippines. After attending the Academy of Arts University of California, he moved to New York, training his eye by working with esteemed photographers such as Richard Avedon, Duane Michals, Mary Ellen Mark and Annie Leibovitz.
London born Richeille graduated with honours from Central St. Martins College of Art before working as an art director and designer.
In 2005, BJ and Richeille met while working together in South Beach, Miami. They admit to love at first sight and were married in New York City three months later.
Their work has been exhibited worldwide and is in permanent collections of International Center of Photography, Moscow Museum of Arts, Currier Museum, Boca Raton Museum, Bruce Museum, Lewben Museum and Musee Des Art Decoratif Paris. They have published "Circumstance: America Down on Bruised Knees" by YK Books (2009) as well as a short film "The Voyage" shown at Cannes Film Festival 2016.
Here's a selection to get your rhythm humming in a frenzy...
Biwty 2 (Bangkok, Thailand) Series: Second Kind of Woman
The series, Second Kind Of Woman, Thailand, serves to confront people’s prejudices and fears and nudge them past embarrassment into accepting the whole spectrum of sexual preference.
Saboteur 24 (Berlin, Germany) Series: Spies, Lies and Saboteurs
Spies, Lies and Saboteurs is Formento & Formento's homage to the unsung heroines of World War II. Their stories demonstrate that they were ordinary women caught up in extraordinary times.
Anna 22 (Fujiyoshida, Japan) Series: 36
In winter of 2018 through spring of 2019, Formento & Formento returned to Japan but focused on channeling the artist Hokusai and asked what Mt. Fuji meant to them.
They consider Japan their spirit place and are always yearning to come back and go deeper in exploring the culture and the landscape.
This body of work moved the duo out of the city of Tokyo and into the countryside. They wanted to live under the ever-changing appearance of Mt. Fuji and experience its burning energy. The series sought to portray an ambiguous narrative using female models to play out an imagined life under the strength of the mountain and beyond the edge of the frame.
Son Subin VII (Paris, France) Series: Japan Diaries, 2013-Present
The highly staged and melodramatic images conjure many references: 1950s Japanese cinema, the photographs of Nobuyoshi Araki, Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and the erotic imagery of Ero Guro paintings.
As outside observers, Formento & Formento's stylised images explore the dichotomies that embody modern Japan - blurring the aesthetics between tradition and the ultra-modern, fantasy and reality. The captivating tableaus exude a sense of tension, melancholy, and a quiet unease.
Each image from "Japan Diaries" exists as if it were a still taken from a Japanese noir film, each solitary figure yearning for something unknown.
Martina Bolex (TWA, NYC) Series: Nostalgia - Art In Progress
"Richeille and I are taking a few years to explore sentimental longing, feelings of pleasure and the wistful affection we have for the past or place. We salvage artefacts of the past for entertainment, to calm present anxieties. We discuss the present in terms of the past, and we judge the present by the standards of long ago. Discussions of movies and television and music tend to begin with the question, “Remember when?” Those words summon happy thoughts.
Or perhaps we return to the past because we are experts in it. Nostalgia waxes as the traditional understanding of time wanes. Human beings are temporal creatures. We need ways to understand and to order the past, the present, and the future. Nostalgia, most truly and most meaningfully, is the emotional experience—always momentary, always fragile—of having what you lost or never had, of seeing what you missed seeing, of meeting the people you missed knowing.
"Are we nostalgic because we are unhappy with the present or are frustrated because we are so nostalgic? Through art we hope to unearth these fleeting feelings that overcome us, and to create work that connects us." ~ Formento & Formento
Hysteria 8 (Budapest, Hungary) Series: Hysteria
Hysteria is set post World War II, when America was at the height of its power, yet also on the verge of spinning out of control. This uncertain state represents a world we still know and are trying to find ways to contend with today.
Formento & Formento
If you want a little Formento & Formento brilliance on your wall, get in touch with us at blair@addictedgallery.com or elena@addictedgallery.com
About Addicted Art Gallery...
Our aim at Addicted Art Gallery is to connect you to art in a friendly, poshless, non-highbrow way.
Over the years we have developed a love for all different types of art and that is what we want Addicted Art Gallery to reflect. As a result, we have divided our art into three broad categories.
Our diverse portfolio includes; Contemporary Art, with a predominantly South East Asian focus; Urban and Pop Art, featuring well known and highly respected artists whose works will make you think, laugh and question; and lastly, there are our beautiful Vintage Posters and Art Deco inspired works which will transport you to a different time.
We hope you enjoy what our Gallery has to offer and encourage everyone to get Addicted too.
