20 June 2008 to 26 July 2008
Wednesday-Saturday 12pm - 6pm & by appt
Opening : Friday, June 20, 2008, 5–8pm
Branch Gallery
401c Foster Street
Durham, NC
North Carolina
North America
p: 1 919 918 1116
m:
f: 1 919 321 1391
w: www.branchgallery.com
Ilka Hartmann, Black Panther supporters and Mao’s little red book. Federal Building. Mayday, San Francisco, 1969 Printed 2003, Silver gelatin print, 18 x 13 inches
gallery 1: Casa de Carton organized by William Cordova gallery 2: Up Against the Wall: Ilka Hartmann curated by William Cordova
on view: June 20–July 26, 2008 opening reception: Friday, June 20, 2008, 5–8pm
Branch Gallery is pleased to present its summer exhibitions, Casa de Carton and Up Against the Wall: Ilka Hartmann, opening Friday, June 20, 2008.
Casa de Carton features a range of works by eight artists from across the United States representing various generations. These artists, who have drawn their sources from lived experiences, share an artistic practice that is linked to their affinity for the sublime and ephemeral, as well as an interest in vernacular contexts. The title of the exhibition alludes to the early twentieth-century prose La Casa de Carton (the cardboard house) by Peruvian writer, Martin Adán, whose seminal text captured a day in the life of the multi-landscapes in Lima seen through his idiosyncratic lens. The exhibition investigates the participating artists’ diverse, yet like-minded understanding of presence in clashed environments through sparse drawings and sculpture. In doing so, the artists in Casa de Carton reveal the complex histories lived by inhabitants of the world landscape; both the seen and unseen, the powerful and the powerless. Casa de Carton artists include: Robert Thiele, George Smith, Carlos Sandoval de Leon, Jorge Pantoja, Gean Moreno, Rashawn Griffin, William Cordova, and Derrick Adams.
In conjunction with Casa de Carton, Branch Gallery will present Up Against the Wall, an exhibition of photographs by Ilka Hartmann, curated by artist William Cordova. Since emerging from the political momentum of the 1960s while still a student in the Northern California Bay Area, German-born and American-based photographer Ilka Hartmann has attracted international attention for her poetic ability to record the quotidian—whether encountered on the street or the most personal corners of daily life—in new and compelling ways through images layered in meaning. In this exhibition, vintage prints and other ephemera (including newspapers, magazines, and an assortment of literature provided by the base Collective) will be on view—a whole milieu of imagery featuring revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, I Wor Kuen, and the United Farm Workers. In the photograph Mao’s Little Red Book (1969), a sea of hands raised high holding Mao Tse-Tung books are protesting Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton’s incarceration. Ilka Hartmann captures rare glimpses into lives engaged in extreme realities that mirror many of today’s public concerns.
A brochure will accompany both exhibitions, featuring an essay by William Cordova, project organizer and artist based in Miami, New York and Houston.
