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Kusseneers Gallery,
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Curtis Mann
Modifications
4 Sept 2008 to 11 Oct 2008
For the series
Modifications Curtis Mann
appropriates and refashions anonymous snapshots that were
taken in countries like Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and
Iraq-places where violent conflicts are deeply rooted and
often seem impossible to resolve. Mann states, "I question
what I've learned about these places and I realize I usually
have to erase most of that knowledge and begin again-more
open-minded, more curious, and more hopeful than before." As
he submits the found images to substantial physical
alterations Mann effectively filters them through a new visual
vocabulary, opening them up for himself-and for viewers-to
engage in a new search for meaning.
After
collecting photographs from photo-sharing websites, estate
sales, and online auctions, Mann enlarges them and paints
certain parts of the photographs with a clear varnish. When he
submerges these prints in household bleach, the varnished
areas resist the bleach while the untreated portions of the
image are washed away. As a result, large sections of each
photograph are replaced by a bright white void, while at its
edges gradients of red and yellow bear faint traces of the
original image. The varnished areas depict clusters of people,
fragments of buildings, or solitary trees, fully visible but
isolated in these otherworldly landscapes. These modifications
accentuate particular details in the original photographs,
hinting at their potential significance.
One of Mann's
hopes for this series is to invite new considerations of the
effects of large-scale violence, but just as importantly he
guides us towards a tangible engagement with the photographic
image itself. At stake is our very experience of the medium
and our sense of its vulnerabilities. In each of these
photographs Mann engages in a complex negotiation between
creation and destruction, and between document and fiction. As
the bleach strips the picture away Mann probes the limits of
photographic credibility. Everything that remains legible
takes on a new charge or a metaphorical weight. In his hands
the photograph is a malleable thing, providing a gentle
reminder that digital imaging might not be such a new world
after all.
Also showing:
Bob and Roberta Smith
Bronzes
Image:
Curtis Mann
Building, Standing (Beirut), 2008
Clear
acrylic varnish and graphite on bleached found
photograph
Courtesy of Kusseneers Gallery, Antwerp
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Yancey Richardson Gallery, New
York |
Masao Yamamoto
Kawa=Flow
September 5 - October 18, 2008
Yancey
Richardson Gallery is pleased to
present Kawa ~ Flow, our fourth exhibition by
Japanese artist Masao Yamamoto, The show
runs concurrently with Nakazora: Space Between Sky and Earth,
a solo exhibition by the artist at The Print Center,
Philadelphia, on view through November 26, 2008. The gallery
exhibition combines the concepts of dispersion and
concentration.
As Yamamoto states:
Up to now I have been working in the form of
installation. What overflows from one photograph would flow
into the next piece, and in two's and threes, the groups would
create a combined effect, like the layered notes of an
orchestra. But recently my thoughts are more focused on the
individual incident - the urge to dwell deeper into each
element is rising slowly. A landscape or an incident around me
is cut out into a square piece of photograph. What that square
piece will inspire in you.. perhaps it is something that
already exists inside of you.
For the exhibition, Yamamoto will devote one wall to
an installation of several dozen photographs drawn from his
ongoing Nakazora series. In these intentionally stained and
worn photographs, Yamamoto explores notions of memory and the
passage of time. Arriving at the gallery bundled in worn
leather suitcases and small enough to hold in the palm of your
hand or carry in your pocket, the work is an anachronism,
belonging to a sensibility that contrasts vividly with the
large-scale color photographs prevalent today. Functioning
like words or phrases in what Yamamoto considers his
"dictionary", the unframed photographs are attached directly
to the gallery wall in a loose constellation where the white
space comes forward as an equal visual element in the
composition.
The balance of the gallery will feature a carefully
considered selection of slightly larger framed photographs,
measuring approximately 5 x 8 inches. These new works mark a
subtle departure from Yamamoto's earlier series. Each one
presenting a contained world of natural beauty, they are
intended to be seen and contemplated singularly as opposed to
in groups. Each image recalls a fleeting, transitory moment:
the crest of a breaking wave, the gaze of an eagle, a ball
suspended in mid-air. Yamamoto's images speak softly with an
intimacy that draws the viewer near to explore each piece at
close range. Rather than telling a story or describing a
scene, the work evokes a moment of heightened awareness, of
looking with quiet intensity at the world.
Yamamoto has produced five books
published by Nazraeli Press: A Box of Ku, È, Nahazora,
Omizuao, and The Path of Green Leaves. His work has been
exhibited internationally at the Centro per l'Arte
Contemporanea, Rome, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography, the Galeria d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, the High
Museum, Atlanta, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The
work of Masao Yamamoto is held in the collections of Harvard
University Art Museums; Museum Contemporary of Photography,
Chicago; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston; The International Center of Photography; Center for
Creative Photography; Princeton University Art Museum; Santa
Barbara Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum.
Project gallery exhibition:
Hiroh Kikai
Tokyo Labyrinth
Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased
to present Tokyo Labyrinth, Hiroh Kikai's
debut solo exhibition in the United States. Currently featured
in the exhibition Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video
from Japan at New York's International Center of Photography,
this is the first presentation of work from Tokyo Labyrinth,
his thirty-year photographic exploration of that city's urban
landscape. Comprised of photographs made between 1976 and 1989
in the suburbs and old downtown of Tokyo, the exhibition
reveals a relationship to documentary photographers ranging
from Eugene Atget to the New Topographics photographers of the
1970s.
Trained as a philosopher, Kikai turned to photography
after encountering the work of Diane Arbus and Walker Evans.
From the beginning of his career in 1976, Kikai has focused on
two parallel bodies of work in his adopted city of Tokyo:
Persona, a series of portraits of individuals encountered in
the Asakusa district; and Tokyo Labyrinth, a portrait of the
city itself in all its surreal and complicated geometry. Kikai
poses his subjects against a blank wall in order to let their
individual personalities reveal themselves without being
informed by the environment; in Tokyo Labyrinth, he has chosen
to photograph the urban landscape without the presence of its
inhabitants. "If a portrait.. is a way to grasp the
interiority of a person, the same thing should be able to be
embodied in the landscape.. I should be able to illustrate the
smells seeping out from people's lives."
In both Tokyo Labyrinth and Persona, Kikai has worked
within certain self-imposed limitations. The artist explains,
"The rule I adopted for Tokyo Labyrinth is to use only
standard lenses on a medium format camera with black-and-white
film. I thought I wouldn't be able to impress my scent on
these cityscapes without such constraints."
Kikai's images combine a careful description of place
with elegant abstraction; windows, laundry, pipes and
telephone lines are reduced to lines and planes. Regardless of
the rigor of his compositions, Kikai is essentially a humanist
who is interested in people and how they live. He describes
his work as asking the question, "What does it mean to be
human?" Kikai's images describe with affection the details of
human existence in one of the most cramped cities on earth,
expressing the eloquence of the commonplace found in the side
streets and back alleys of modest neighborhoods with formal
precision and an eye for the surreal. With an economy of
means, Kikai's work projects honesty and a deep respect for
the evidence of time and humanity.
Hiroh Kikai's work is the subject of
seven books, among them the 1999 publication Tokyo Labyrinth.
A major monograph, Hiroh Kikai, was published by Steidl this
month. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Neue
National Galerie, Berlin; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography; Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan; and Center
for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona.
Images:
Masao Yamamoto, Untitled #1515 (from Kawa
= Flow), 2007
Hiroh Kikai, Tokyo Labyrinth, Kitashinagawa,
Shinagawa, 1986
Courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New
York
YANCEY RICHARDSON
GALLERY
535 West 22nd Street 3rd floor New
York, NY 10011 +1 646-230-9610
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Caren Golden Fine Art, New
York |
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Jonathan Calm: Projects
September 4 - October 11, 2008
Caren
Golden Fine Art is delighted to announce the season
opener and solo show of Jonathan Calm, his
third solo exhibition with the gallery. In this new body of
photographs, video and installation work, Calm continues to
explore the imagery and themes inspired by the detritus and
ephemeral moments of the changing urban landscape and its
inhabitants.
Finding inspiration from such subjects as public
housing projects, archival footage of 1940's urban renewal
programs, mainstream media's signifiers of "ghetto life" and
the gentrification occurring today in America's inner-city
neighborhoods, Calm's work provokes viewers to question the
broad generalizations made about both the architecture and the
people who live in these environments. Collectively his
critical eye siphons out of these often overlooked and avoided
places images that are poetic and powerful. An unexpected
combination of elements ignites Calm's work and makes it sear
through the duality of a whole host of complex and critical
issues on promise, oppression, beauty, neglect, the comic and
the tragic.
Calm's work draws on a keen sense of minimalist and
formalist aesthetics which take the form of geometric elements
and regularized patterns found in most urban spaces, from the
linear brick facade of a city housing project, the diamond
patterns of safety glass or the web of a basketball net. Yet
the rich and poetic imagery of buildings reflected in puddles
of water simultaneously rubs up against a feeling of
dislocation from the buildings' inhabitants as well as sense
of disorientation created by the inverted reflections. The
collaged, looped and layered original and cleverly edited
appropriated videos are inspired by the artist's own memories
of growing up in New York City and his return visits to the
housing "projects." Calm's work equally draws on a wealth of
information generated from his extensive and ongoing research
into the origins of urban public housing and its evolution
since.
Jonathan Calm's work has been widely
exhibited with solo and group exhibitions at galleries and
museums throughout the United States and Europe, including the
Museum of Modern Art, Tate Britain, the Reina Sophia, the
Studio Museum in Harlem, the Jersey City Museum, Wadsworth
Athenaeum Museum of Art and most recently the Renaissance
Society in Chicago. His work has garnered critical attention
in numerous publications including Art in America, The New
York Times, Artforum and the Village Voice along with
appearing in numerous exhibition catalogues. Jonathan Calm:
Projects will be on view from September 4 - October 11,
2008.
Lorraine Morales Cox, Ph.D.
July 2008
Image:
Jonathan Calm
George in Marcy Park, 2008
pigment print, 40 x 50 inches, edition of 3
Courtesy of Caren Golden Fine Art, New
York
Caren Golden Fine Art
539 West
23rd Street
Ground Floor
New York, NY 10011
+1 212
727 8304
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Michael Mazzeo Gallery, New
York |
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How I Spent My Summer Vacation
September 12 - October 11
Craig Barber, Robert Bowen, Caleb Charland, John
Chervinsky, Rachael Dunville, Roger Eberhard, Sebastian Lemm,
Julie Peppito, Cara Phillips, Josh Quigley, Christopher
Rauschenberg, Fernando Souto, and Will Steacy
The long days of summer invite us to breathe, play,
and to broaden our sights beyond our tired borders. It is a
time to reinvigorate our souls and prepare for the coming
unknown. It is in this spirit of rebirth that Peer
Gallery will reopen in September, under our new
banner, the Michael Mazzeo Gallery.
As nights become longer and the languid summer days
ease into memory, we are pleased to present our inaugural
exhibition, How I Spent My Summer Vacation,
featuring work and text inspired by summers present and past,
real and imaginary. The 13 artists included in the exhibition
display a wide range of style and content.
Craig Barber's exquisite platinum
prints provide us with an elegiac glimpse into the long gone
era of the grand Catskill Mountain retreats. Robert Bowen, by
digitally re-imagining vintage picture postcards, creates
witty scenes
of idyllic moments gone awry. Caleb
Charland's gelatin silver prints document the
whimsical results of mechanical and pyrotechnic
experiments engineered with improvised materials. John
Chervinsky tells us a fish story and allows us to see
right through it, with x-ray technology. Rachael
Dunville presents another of her seductive portraits,
this one of a provocative male figure standing in a forest,
clad only in his white briefs. Roger
Eberhard, a Swiss photographer, captures the searing
heat of the desert with his vision of sun scorched land and
abandoned structures from his travels through the American
West. Sebastian Lemm introduces a new body of
large scale work expanding his explorations into structures
with lyrical, multi-layered images from the forests of various
countries. Julie Peppito provides us with a
phantasmagoric insect fabricated from recycled materials and
suspended from the ceiling. Cara Phillips
sheds light on sun damaged skin and cosmetic surgery with a
black and white portrait made with ultraviolet imaging.
Josh Quigley's large scale color print is a
delightfully humorous, voyeuristic look at a middle aged
nudist wandering around his back yard wearing only sunglasses.
Christopher Rauschenberg, in an homage to his
father, shows his hand at the end of the funeral procession at
the Fish House. Fernando Souto's magnificent
black and white print depicts three generations of cowboys
finding relief from the summer sun in the shade of a trailer.
Will Steacy's color portrait lingers on a
woman in a swimsuit, casually gazing across a river with her
tattooed fish seemingly leaping out of water.
Images:
Sebastian LEMM, "Strata 1", 2008, Chromogenic Print,
60x48 in., edition of 3
Will STEACY, "Liz, Morristown, 2007", Chromogenic
Print, 24x20 in, edition of 8
Courtesy of Michael Mazzeo Gallery, NYC
MICHAEL MAZZEO GALLERY
526 W.26
St.
NYC 10001
+1.212.741.6599
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Ellen de Bruijne Projects,
Amsterdam |
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L.A.Raeven
The Height of Vanity
6 September - 11 October
Lu Yan
& Sun Mei
The work of L.A.Raeven deals with
the ideal image of beauty; The image of female beauty in
fashion and media, created by the dominant western society.
People are losing their identity and don't see the beauty of
their own image anymore. In fact, people admire the western
ideal and start to dislike their own identity.
Lu Yan & Sun Mei are obsessed with their
appearance, in particular with their body proportions. Like
many other Chinese women and men, they want to be taller. The
western ideal of the perfect body has found it's way into
modern China and to have the longer legs that guarantee a
successful life, young people decide to undergo a very painful
leg lengthening operation.
Lu Yan's legs have both been
broken and a steel pin was inserted on each side of the bone.
Attached to a stretching devise, the pins had to be tightened
on a daily base, despite the unbearable pain this gave her. In
The Height of Vanity the L.A.Raeven sisters follow Lu Yan and
her friend Sun Mei in their path towards a perfect body. The
film covers the subject of taking control over your own body,
of making a life changing choice. The influence of the media
on women is very strong, but even stronger is the influence
women have on each other. If your friends make themselves
'better' you are seduced to do the same. It is an influence
that goes together with feelings as jealousy and guilt, and
with social codes which results in exclusion or inclusion in
'the group'.
The Height of Vanity, 2008, video
installation with 8 video projections/monitors, photographs
and files
In Dolores:
Pauline Boudry / Renate
Lorenz
"NORMAL WORK"
Film, 13 Min (16
mm. on DVD) and part of an archive (25 photographs of Hannah
Cullwick, 1855-1902, Trinity College, London)
Hannah Cullwick not only cleaned from early in the
morning to late in the evening in various households, she also
produced a series of remarkable staged photographs, numerous
diaries, and letters. These materials present her strength,
her muscles, and her big, dirty hands: embodiments of her
gender that were obviously directly connected with her working
practices and which she was very proud of.
Hannah Cullwick´s portraits and self-portraits, which
show her not only as a domestic servant, but also in "class
drag" or "ethnic drag", where part of a sadomasochistic
relationship that she had with Arthur Mumby, a man from the
bourgeois class. Interestingly, it was the elements of her
hard work in the households that provided the material for
their shared SM scenes. The work that Cullwick carried out as
a domestic servant was later restaged together with Mumby in
their meetings in his home. Cullwick described herself as
Mumby´s slave, she wore a "slave band" on her wrist, which she
never took off, and a chain and padlock on her neck, whose key
was belonged by Mumby. She called him "massa", a name, which -
like "slave"- referred to England's reality as a colonial
power.
The crossings of social positions that she staged in
the photographs - which show her as a bourgeois woman, as a
young bourgeois man, or as a slave in blackface - partly also
play a role in Cullwick´s everyday life, for instance when she
travelled with Arthur Mumby in "bourgeois drag".
The photographs can be understood as a technology to
control these crossings, or to reflect on the great efforts
and constant deliberation that were connected to them. The
film "normal work" asks whether the crossings of social
hierarchies of class, gender, and "race" that Hannah Cullwick
staged and that she obviously desired have today become
generalized into a paradoxical requirement in the field of
labour.
Performer: Werner Hirsch
Camera: Bernadette
Paassen
Sounddesign: Rashad Becker
Berlin, 2007
Images:
L.A Raeven - The Height of Vanity, 2008
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz "Normal Work" ,
Berlin 2007
Courtesy of Ellen de Bruijne projects,
Amsterdam
Ellen de Bruijne
Projects
Rozengracht 207 A 1016 LZ
Amsterdam Netherlands
+31 (0) 20 530 4994
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September 17-18 - Sculpture / Installation
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