‘Undressed’ to be unveiled in Las Vegas

Photography exhibit explores body language, unattainable beauty

Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 | 3:47 p.m.

What: "Undressed," a photographic exhibit by Aimee Helen Koch.
When: Nov. 28 to Feb. 11.
Where: Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 Brush St., Las Vegas. Hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays. Closed Sundays, Monday and holidays.
Admission: Free
More information: 702-229-1012. Artist's Web site.

A photographic art exhibit by Aimee Helen Koch, a Virginia-based artist who explores the human form through fashion, will go on display next week in Las Vegas.

Koch's exhibition, "Undressed", will be presented by the city of Las Vegas from Nov. 28 through Feb. 11 at the Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush St. Admission is free.

According to Koch, "Fashion tends to treat the body as mere mannequin. It is the clothing rather than the wearing of it that is purportedly significant.

"But on the runway, only certain bodies appear," Koch says about her exhibit. "The desire becomes not so much to wear the outfits as to accrue the status that beauty and conformity offer — it is to reach for the unattainable body and to punish the inevitable failure to achieve it."

Koch, who received a master's degree in fine arts in photography in 2005 from Washington University in St. Louis, has exhibited in 12 solo shows and 25 group/invitational exhibits around the country and in France.

She has been a freelance photographer since 2001 in New York, St. Louis and Richmond, Va., and has been published in Brick Weekly, Dance Europe Magazine, Style Weekly, Time Out New York, The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Village Voice.