Lot 7: JEFFREY MILSTEIN

American Airlines, Boeing 777-200
Signed, titled and numbered 2/3 in pencil on a label affixed to the reverse of the frame.

127 x 127 cm. (50 x 50 in).

Ultrachrome pigment inkjet print, flush-mounted.

2006

J. Milstein, AirCraft: The Jet as Art, 2007, p. 85

Young Gallery, Brussels

Jeffrey Milstein’s airplanes hover within an ethereal space. Neither grounded nor clearly airborne, they are frozen, in stasis. The ferocity of their jets silenced, the thrust created in their wake absent, these airplanes are ours to gaze upon, project, and reflect. And they captivate on a number of levels. Acting like the very clouds that areconsciously absent in Milstein’s images, their meaning shifts depending on one’s mood, imagination, and perspective…He is working here in essence as a portrait photographer. He is not interested in the context in which his subject exists, nor is he particularly interested in depicting what they are doing at the moment he clicks his shutter. What Milstein is interested in is “character”—the individual qualities that come together to formsomething unique and personal.
Ariel Shanberg in Aircraft: The Jet as Art, 2007, p. 10