ANDREAS GURSKY – BANGKOK

Posted on 2018-01-08

Gursky has demonstrated that a photographer can make or construct—rather than simply take—photographs about modern life and produce them on the scale of epic painting. Just as history painters of previous centuries found their subjects in the realities of everyday life, he finds inspiration in his own spontaneous visual experience and through reports of global phenomena in the daily media. From initially using the computer as a retouching tool, he began exploring its transformative potential, sometimes combining elements of multiple shots of the same subject into an intricate yet seamless whole, at other times barely altering the image at all. The resulting pictures have a formal congruence deriving from a bold and edgy dialogue between photography and painting, representation and abstraction. Over time his subjects have expanded to map and distill the emergent patterns and symmetries of a globalized world with its consensual flows and grids of data and people, architecture, and mass spectacle. In pursuit of his aim to create “an encyclopedia of life,” Gursky’s worldview fuses the perpetual motion of existence with the stillness of metaphysical reflection.

Opposite – Bangkok V, 2011

Exhibition runs through to March 2nd, 2018

Gagosian
Via Francesco Crispi, 16
00187 Rome
Italy

www.gagosian.com

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ANNE COLLIER

Posted on 2018-01-08

In ‘Women Crying’, Collier examines manifestations of staged emotions by enlarging and tightly cropping into imagery that originally appeared in advertisements and on album covers from the 1960’s to the 1980’s: imagery that served to reinforce a clichéd and romanticized notion of female vulnerability. (Paradoxically, the original advertisements and recordings were largely marketed to an audience of young and adolescent women).

Formally Collier’s photographic work mirrors the techniques of commercial and scientific photography: using a large-format plate camera Collier creates an almost
forensic account of the objects and subjects under consideration, within the formal context of the studio. Collier’s photographic works are typically based on imagery sourced from the material culture of the pre-digital era: including magazines, advertisements, album covers, and other printed matter that had previous widespread circulation. The manner in which photographic images circulate is a central concern in Collier’s consideration of photography’s many histories and uses – particularly in Collier’s examination of how photography has routinely been employed to portray the female subject in a sexually, psychologically or emotionally compromised state.

Opposite – Woman Crying #12, 2017

Exhibition runs through to January 13th, 2018

The Modern Institute
14-20 Osborne Street
G1 5QN Glasgow
Scotland

www.themoderninstitute.com

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HUGH HOLLAND – SILVER. SKATE. SEVENTIES.

Posted on 2018-01-01

On a late afternoon in 1975, a young photographer named Hugh Holland drove up Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles and encountered skateboarders carving up the drainage ditches along the side of the canyon. Southern California was experiencing a major drought. Emptied suburban swimming pools became evaporated playgrounds for kids with wheels—kick-starting an explosive skateboarding scene. “It spread like wildfire all over Southern California,” says photographer Hugh Holland. “I know it happened in other parts of the world too, but California felt like the center of it all.” Immediately transfixed by their grace and athleticism, he knew he had found an amazing subject. Although not a skateboarder himself, for the next three years Holland never tired of documenting skateboarders surfing the streets of Los Angeles, parts of the San Fernando Valley, Venice Beach and as far away as San Francisco and Baja California, Mexico.

Hugh Holland: Silver. Skate. Seventies., adds a more raw, spontaneous understanding to Holland’s well-known color photographs of the 1970’s skating scene. Though now he is most closely associated with his later work in color, the artist began his photographic documentation of the skateboard revolution shooting in black and white. Holland shot these negatives while experimenting with new ideas and often for his own enjoyment. These early black and white images were in many ways the genesis for his later color works—providing us with a rare glimpse behind the creative curtain.

Opposite – Flash at the Pier, Huntington Beach, CA, 1975

Exhibition runs through to January 31st, 2018

PDNB
154 Glass St. #104
Dallas
75207 TX

www.mbphoto.com

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JOHN HERRIN

Posted on 2018-01-01

After Hurricane Ike hit Houston, Herrin’s flower arrangements within his home took on a different character in darkness, resulting in the days long power outage. That was when he decided to photograph the flowers that his wife often brought to the house, beautifully inserted into unique vases from their collection.

Since that time, he has evolved in his depiction of still lives. What became bewitching was the slow death of the tulip, how some petals drop, and some do not. The great master painters have been depicting aging and death via still lives over a century. Herrin, perhaps not so much removed from the concept of graceful aging, pursues the beauty of nature with great technical and visual acumen.

Opposite – Flower #2, 2014

Exhibition runs through to February 10, 2018

PDNB
154 Glass St. #104
Dallas
75207 TX

pdnbgallery.com

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KATE BELLM – NIGHT SKY RISING

Posted on 2018-01-01

Nomadic and wild by nature, Kate Bellm (b. 1987, London) has created her own world through her images- one of iridescent colours, nude silhouettes and surreal natural surroundings.

She has captured everything from dreamlike landscapes, aquatic havens sprinkled with ethereal nymphs to eroded urban settings and with these set the scene for leading fashion campaigns.

The show at LAMB reflects on this versatility- the gallery’s upstairs displays a series of recent works which explore the photographer’s vision of the surrounding nature in her home, Mallorca. Whereas, the downstairs displaying a combination of sketches, notebooks and photographs, will focus more on the thoughts, the imagination and the people that have contributed to the building of such a vision.

Opposite – Nina, 2017

Exhibition runs through to January 13th, 2018

LAMB Arts
10 White Horse Street
Mayfair
London
W1J 7LJ

www.lamb-arts.com

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PAZ ERRAZURIZ – CIRCO

Posted on 2017-12-25

Errázuriz is one of Chile’s most internationally recognised photographers. Famous for her photographs which captured life in Chile under Pinochet, the self-taught artist focuses her lens on subjects at the periphery or transgressions of society – the homeless, old, infirmed, or, in her most famous series, La Manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), male prostitutes and transvestites. ‘They are topics that society doesn’t look at, and my intention is to encourage people to dare to look’. (Errázuriz)

For this exhibition, we shall be exhibiting a rarely seen series of work. Entitled El Circo (Circus), it captures another group at the margins, circus workers, offering a back door view of the life of the circus. Errázuriz started the series in 1984 and over the following five years she lived for long periods with the members of the itinerant circus caravans that are depicted in the photographs. This embedded way of working, where the artist is not an observer but rather an active part of the group she is capturing, on the inside, has often been repeated in later series of works by the artist and is fundamental to her practice. It represents her approach of dignifying her subjects, rather than objectifying them. The series consists of 28 images and this is the first time that it will be exhibited in its entirety.

Opposite – Miss Piggy, 1984

Exhibition runs through to January 19th, 2018

Cecilia Brunson Projects
Royal Oak Yard
Bermondsey Street
London
SE1 3GD

www.ceciliabrunsonprojects.com

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