Naught Couture

What the eye immediately beholds, the brain doesn't necessarily absorb.

Not until the third, fourth or 11th viewing.

That is the maddening miracle of art.

It makes you work for it.

"A lot of my work is about the fine line between things," says artist Aimee Helen Koch. "It's between beautiful and not beautiful, between artificial and real."

As an artistic tweener, the Virginia-based photographer's "Undressed" -- on display through early February at the Charleston Heights Arts Center -- mines the middle ground between the glamour of women's fashion and the psychology of women's expectations. And how the former triggers the latter.

Noticeably absent of the bold colors one might expect of a fashion-themed exhibit, "Undressed" is instead a stark societal statement, not bursting with warmth, but extending an invitation to think.

"When I had a chance to go to Paris for an artist's residency, I went to fashion shows and was really struck by the experience," Koch says. "I was moved by the psychosis involved in modeling. It's a prescribed image and I thought there were a lot of paradoxes and contradictions in fashion. I was intrigued and troubled by that."

Ironically, "Undressed" keeps its clothes on and strips away the women. "They were all shot on a Paris runway," Koch says. "All the (clothing) was actually on people, and then, pixel by pixel, I went in and erased them."

Through images in which garments appear draped around invisible mannequins, what remains are body poses of runway pros -- some curvy and provocative, some conservative and presentational, all promoting a "look" in fashion-show fashion, conveying how these pout-and-strut spectacles craft images of idealized femininity.

"I'm trying to get the public to think about fashion," Koch says. "There are enormous numbers of cases of anorexia and eating disorders, and a lot of that is because of these images."

Yet "Undressed," with its disembodied, nearly ghostly imagery set against black and white backdrops, can keep viewers at an emotional distance even as it challenges them to peek beyond the garments and examine the body-perfection mind-set.

"I responded to it, and the images are pretty powerful, yet it's not especially inviting," says Jeanne Voltura, gallery coordinator for the city of Las Vegas, who nonetheless chose the exhibit to install at the center. "I want to reach people visually, but also emotionally or intellectually. These images become sort of like the invisible woman, and you start to think about the objectification of women."

Fashion's tendency to treat the human form as a mere mannequin is a central theme in "Undressed," exposing how clothing, rather than those wearing it, dominates. "On the runway, only certain bodies appear," Koch says. "The desire becomes not so much to wear the outfits as to accrue the status that beauty and conformity offer -- to reach for the unattainable body and punish the inevitable failure to achieve it."

Couture comes in all styles in "Undressed," from frocks and gowns -- one photographed from behind, the dress outlining and exposing the black void that was a woman's back before Koch digitally subtracted it -- to sweaters and shirts and vests and undergarments and coats. One shirt is unbuttoned nearly to the breasts, selling pure allure, while another dress expresses modesty, buttoned to the neck. And a chic trench coat conjures images of a "Casablanca"-esque Ingrid Bergman (Bogey did tell her they'd always have Paris, after all).

"(Fashion) can be a wonderful art and an expression of individualism and just incredibly impressive designs," Koch says. "It has the potential to be both liberating and incredibly harmful."

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.