DAWOUD BEY – IN THIS HERE PLACE

Posted on 2021-10-04

In This Here Place is the third project in Dawoud Bey’s history series. Working his way back in time, Bey’s first series, The Birmingham Project, (2012), paid tribute to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. The second series, Night Coming Tenderly, Black (2017), departed from figuration as Bey made the landscape his subject with photographs of real and imagined locations along the Underground Railroad. This third, new body of work portrays the physical sites of the forced labor of enslavement. Taken at sites with an unfathomably traumatic past, this series represents a deep witnessing and rich visual description, evoking the past in now unpopulated landscapes. The photographs were all made in Louisiana, along the west banks of the Mississippi River and at the Evergreen, Destrehan, Laura, Oak Alley, and Whitney Plantations.

Opposite – Cabin and Benches, 2019

Exhibition runs through to October 23rd, 2021

Sean Kelly
475 Tenth Avenue
New York
NY 1001

www.skny.com

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AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY, 1930-1950

Posted on 2021-10-04

Hindsight presents a case for the decisive impact of women upon the history of documentary photography through a selection of prints drawn from Mia’s collection as well as that of Dan Shogren and Susan Meyer. Centering the work of six American photographers – Margaret Bourke-White, Esther Bubley, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Genevieve Naylor, and Marion Post Wolcott – the exhibition showcases images that were created for a diverse range of projects, from governmental commissions to editorial assignments. Meant to communicate with audiences increasingly attuned to global social and political movements, these photographs provide insight into lives both everyday and extraordinary: the routines of working people in Brazil; the impact of industrialization upon rural Americans; Black Americans’ experiences of racial segregation and economic inequality; the nonviolent political resistance of Mahatma Gandhi against British colonial rule. In these ways, Hindsight reveals each photographer’s power in the making of historical memory.

Opposite – Esther Bubley, American, 1921-1998, Greyhound Bus Station, New York City, 1947

Exhibition runs through to November 7th, 2021

Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis
MN 55404

new.artsmia.org

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CTRL+ALT+YELLOW

Posted on 2021-10-04

California is home to the largest population of individuals of Asian descent in the U.S. From the galleon ships that brought sailors to the Americas from the Philippines in the 16th century to the contract laborers who arrived from China in the 1850s, many groups from Asia immigrated to escape hardship, war, or colonization, only to endure policies of exclusion, indentured servitude, racist policies, and negative stereotyping in their new home. Today, violence and prejudice continues in the form of scapegoating around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ctrl+Alt+Yellow convenes Bay Artist artists with Asian lineage who imagine alternative modes of existence. They employ radical modes of narration, exemplifying how communities can take charge of their own stories to re-construct their own understanding of the past, the realities of the present, and future possibilities.

Exhibition runs through to November 6th, 2021

B4BEL4B
184 10th Street
Oakland
CA 94607

www.b4bel4b.com

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MIMI PLUMB – THE WHITE SKY

Posted on 2021-09-27

Plumb’s black and white photographs of 1970s life in Walnut Creek expound evocatively on the peculiar banality of Californian suburban sprawl, touching on candid narratives of youthful summertime wanderlust. The resulting eerily compelling images lead the viewer through tangential story lines that are mysterious yet familiar.

Opposite – Couple at the Gas Station, 1972

Exhibition runs through to November 26th, 2021

Robert Koch Gallery
49 Geary Street 5th Floor
San Francisco
CA 94108

kochgallery.com

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CURRAN HATLEBERG

Posted on 2021-09-27

The photographs on view span Hatleberg’s second body of work, for which he has been travelling the country by car to photograph the slough of the white man’s American dream.

Hatleberg is known for his depictions of human exchange, in all of its complexity. This presentation is, in a first for the artist, a purposeful turn. The photographs are nearly completely emptied of bodies; when they do appear, they are fragmented and obscured. We are left with only traces of human presence: the remains of an abandoned kitchen, the open road beyond a car windshield, or a dangling alligator carcass. The artist writes, “Our country is different and changed in its present iteration and we can’t help but regard it with a stare that we hold in reserve for the most difficult circumstances.”

Opposite – Untitled (Bathtub), 2019

Exhibition runs through to November 13th, 2021

Higher Pictures Generation
16 Main Street
Brooklyn
NY 11201

www.houkgallery.com

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JESSICA WYNNE – DO NOT ERASE

Posted on 2021-09-27

Do Not Erase contemplates the meaning, emotion, and energy of symbols. Her photographs- which can easily be mistaken for three-dimensional chalkboards- illuminate the narrative, linguistic, and visionary elements of these representations, providing timeless meditation on the abstraction and intimacy of visual expression.

Wynne studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University before moving to New York City in 1999. She was first introduced to the beauty of chalkboards through her neighbors Amie Wilkinson and Benson Farb, mathematics professors from the University of Chicago. Intrigued by the imagery she saw on these boards, Wynne directed her focus on capturing-rather than deciphering-the meaning and beauty of these symbols. Reminiscent of Cy Twombly’s “blackboard” paintings and Brice Marden’s serpentine Letters canvases, Wynne’s blackboards illuminate the power of the whirling web of shapes, numbers, and calculations scribbled in the heat of discovery.

Opposite – Sahar Khan, Columbia University, 2019

Exhibition runs through to October 9th, 2021

Edwynn Houk Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue, 4th Floor
New York
NY 10151

www.houkgallery.com

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