PHOTO-POETICS – AN ANTHOLOGY

Posted on 2015-09-21

This group exhibition features more than 70 works by ten artists: Claudia Angelmaier, Erica Baum, Anne Collier, Moyra Davey, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Lisa Oppenheim, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag, and Sara VanDerBeek. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue will examine an important new development in contemporary photography, offering an opportunity to define the concerns of a younger generation of artists and contextualize their work within the history of art and visual culture.

Drawing on the legacies of Conceptualism, these artists pursue a largely studio-based approach to still-life photography that centers on the representation of objects, often printed matter such as books, magazines, and record covers. The result is an image imbued with poetic and evocative personal significance—a sort of displaced self-portraiture—that resonates with larger cultural and historical meanings. Driven by a profound engagement with the medium of photography, these artists investigate the nature, traditions, and magic of photography at a moment characterized by rapid digital transformation. They attempt to rematerialize the photograph through meticulous printing, using film and other disappearing photo technologies, and creating artist’s books, installations, and photo-sculptures. While they are invested in exploring the processes, supports, and techniques of photography, they are also deeply interested in how photographic images circulate. Theirs is a sort of “photo poetics,” an art that self-consciously investigates the laws of photography and the nature of photographic representation, reproduction, and the photographic object.

Opposite – Erica Baum, Jaws (from the series Naked Eye), 2008

Exhibition runs from November 20th till March 23rd, 2016

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
(at 89th Street)
New York
NY 10128-0173

www.guggenheim.org

  

THE POWER OF PICTURES: EARLY SOVIET PHOTOGRAPHY

Posted on 2015-09-21

From early vanguard constructivist works by Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky, to the modernist images of Arkady Shaikhet and Max Penson, Soviet photographers played a pivotal role in the history of photography. Covering the period from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution through the 1930s, this exhibition explores how early modernist photography influenced a new Soviet style while energizing and expanding the nature of the medium — and how photography, film, and poster art were later harnessed to disseminate Communist ideology. The Power of Pictures revisits this moment in history when artists acted as engines of social change and radical political engagement, so that art and politics went hand in hand.

Opposite – Alexander Rodchenko, Stairs, 1929–30

Exhibition runs through to October 24th, 2015

The Jewish Museum
1109 5th Ave at 92nd St
New York
NY 10128

thejewishmuseum.org

  

DAVID SIMS FOR SUPREME

Posted on 2015-09-21

Supreme have worked with photographer David Sims on an exclusive project documenting their team riders Tyshawn Jones, Sage Elsesser, Sean Pablo and Aidan Mackey, and will be releasing this as a hardcover book. Shot in New York, the images take in a range of set-ups, both on location and in the studio, steering away from typical skate photography to offer a unique take on American youth.

David Sims was central to an insurgent moment in fashion photography in the early nineties. Alongside Juergen Teller, Corinne Day and Wolfgang Tillmans, he helped define a new soulfulness in fashion imagery. Stripping back the glamour and luxury of the supermodel era, through their filter, photography began to shift towards a renewed honesty with direct and raw images.

Sims became an influential voice in fashion working on campaigns and projects with Raf Simons, Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang, Prada and Yohji Yamamoto. His editorial work saw him deliver seminal magazine covers capturing two icons who shaped the nineties, with Kurt Cobain in The Face (September 1993), and Kate Moss for i-D (February 1996).

Moving away from his minimal earlier style, recently his work for Arena Homme+ magazine has taken on a more nebulous palette, enriching this with a lo-fi approach which further adds to his powerful ongoing vision.

www.supremenewyork.com

  

ANDREW FLADEBOE – THE SHEPHERD’S REALM

Posted on 2015-09-14

The Shepherd’s Realm is a multi-part photographic series consisting of portraits of working dog breeds set against striking landscapes. The result of extensive international travel, the exhibition features ten photographs taken in New Zealand as part of a Fulbright scholarship, six produced in Norway, and one early photograph from the series taken in Scotland. This is the gallery’s first solo exhibition of Fladeboe’s work and the third installment of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art’s exhibition series at Site 109 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Inspired by the tradition of British animal portraiture, Fladeboe’s images reference the eighteenth-century paintings of George Stubbs and the nineteenth-century canvasses of Edwin Landseer. The Shepherd’s Realm has much in common with the artistic practices and scientific investigation of the Victorian era. The work draws from the ideals of Romanticism and celebrates the beauty of the natural world through sublime landscapes and embracing the raw experience of nature by emphasizing emotion through aesthetics.

As Fladeboe points out: “The camera is also an instrument of science and facts. I want to illustrate these animals in the way they truly are.” In this manner the series merges the traits of Romanticism with the scientific and documentarian elements of Realism. While this pairing might seem like an oxymoron, it fits with the Victorian era’s pursuit of the wondrous beauty of nature comingling with the scientific: “My work inhabits the realms between the accurate portrayal of nature and the emotional qualities of it,” says Fladeboe.

Opposite – Over the Mountain, 2014

Exhibition runs from October 8th till November 1st, 2015

Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art @ Site 109
109 Norfolk Street
New York
NY 10002

www.phhfineart.com

  

MEGAN CUMP – ATOMS / STONES

Posted on 2015-09-14

Megan Cump’s series ATOMS / STONES is a lyrical atlas made of fireworks, insects, prehistoric rock carvings, night skies, and portraits of sleepers. In Madrid, Cump encountered a 250,000-year-old fragment of a cranium – its interior laced with inky lines, branching like rivers on a map. This led her to a photographic investigation at the intersection of cosmology and cartography.

Charting their paths and patterns in the dark sky: stars, fireworks, satellites, and fireflies plot their coordinates in light. These dots and dashes, made on both a micro and macro scale, collide and scatter like atomic particles, tracing the universe on film. Other photographs are from Cump’s nighttime explorations in Portugal’s Côa River Valley. Here, Paleolithic images of horses, aurochs, felines, and ibex were incised into the rocky terrain over 20,000 years ago; marking the route of late Ice Age migrations and the origins of art-making.

Opposite – “untitled (fireworks I)” 2014

Exhibition runs through to October 11th, 2015

Station Independent Projects
138 Eldridge Street
Suite 2F
New York
NY 10002

www.stationindependent.com

  

CHENG RAN – A FILM IN PROGRESS

Posted on 2015-09-14

The exhibition will focus on works that were conceived during Cheng Ran’s two-year residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Am­sterdam. His main medium is video, but Cheng Ran also works in other media such as installation, photography and sound performance. The exhibition’s title, A Film in Progress, alludes to the artist’s 9-Hour Film, which will premiere at the Istanbul Biennial in September 2015. Cheng Ran has been working on this film since 2013 and created a number of artworks that are directly linked to the process of filmmak­ing. 9-Hour Film is based on three real stories of adventure, exploration, and the pertinacity of enigma. The characters of the three plots are the mountain climber George Mallory, the artist Bas Jan Ader and the crew of the Shandong Lu Rong Yu fishing boat no. 2682. George Mallory disappeared in an attempt to climb Mount Everest for the first time. Bas Jan Ader died during one of his performances. And on Rong Yu fishing boat no. 2682 eleven crewmembers murdered the other twenty-two at sea. Although, in this exhibition, the 9-Hour Film remains a mystery–as A Film in Progress–and is not exhibited, the other works tell us about it.

Opposite – Scenario Hypothesis 2, 2015

Exhibition runs through to October 24th, 2015

Galerie Urs Meile
Rosenberghöhe 4
CH-6004 Lucerne
Switzerland

galerieursmeile.com