OCTAGON :: KEVIN LYNCH

Van de Weghe Fine Art and Ultimate Fighting Championship® are pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by artist Kevin Lynch: Octagon: The Exhibition and invite you to preview the show on Thursday, September 25, 6 – 8 pm, The Ultimate Fighting Championship is the world’s leading professional mixed martial arts organization and offers the premier series of MMA sports events. Owned and operated by Zuffa, LLC, and headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, UFC produces more than 12 live PPV events annually that are distributed residentially through North American cable and satellite providers including iN DEMAND Networks, DIRECTV, DISH Network, TVN Entertainment, Shaw Pay-Per-View, Bell ExpressVU, Viewers Choice, SaskTel Max™ via the Internet worldwide on Yahoo! Sports, and commercially through Joe Hand Promotions in the U.S. and Canadastar in Canada. In addition to its North American distribution, UFC programming is distributed in more than 100 countries and territories throughout the world. For more information, or current UFC fight news, visit ufc.com, uk.ufc.com, or ufcespanol.com. Internationally recognized for his growing portfolio of conceptual portraiture, Lynch’s celebrity, fashion, advertising and fine art images have appeared in museums and galleries throughout Europe and the United States, and in such diverse publications as Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, In Style, Wallpaper, Men’s Journal, Vogue, American Photo and B&W Magazine. Though born in the United States, Lynch spent his formative years in Europe, where he “fell into photography” during the course of his fine art studies. While pursuing degrees in photo design at the Fachhochschule Darmstadt and art history at Universität Frankfurt AM in the mid-1980s, Lynch began assisting photographer Horst Wackerbarth on his book, The Red Couch Project: A Portrait of America. After settling in Los Angeles, he assisted celebrity photographer Greg Gorman in the conceptualization, design and printing of Gorman’s commercial commissions and published books. Over a four-year period, Los Angeles-based Lynch was given unprecedented access to document this extraordinary mixed martial arts sport, both ringside and behind the scenes. The large-format, chromogenic prints on exhibition will be selected from Lynch’s photographic narrative of this epic experience, the limited-edition Octagon book published by Zuffa, LLC, owner of the UFC brand, and powerHouse Books. In these photographs, Lynch manages to capture the rawness of the fighters and their fights and the atmosphere of the arenas. Using a globe light in order to best emulate locker-room -room light, Lynch’s portraits of the fighters illustrate their vulnerability and their honor - “it’s not really a flattering light,” says Lynch, “but it’s a very honest light.”