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WINTER SALON — Group Exhibition Featuring: Tessa Bunney, Antony Crossfield, Elaine Duigenan, Max de Esteban, Cornelia Hediger, Doug Keyes, Paula McCarthy, Jim Naughten, Helen Sear and Jojtech V. Sláma
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MAX DE ESTEBAN — Proposition One Esteban's overall photographic practice explores socio-political concepts within visual structures of serialization and repetition. The exhibition features his most recent body of photographs, Proposition One: Only The Ephemeral. With this new work, he turns his camera toward recent cutting-edge technology—utilized in the creation and communication of art—that is now considered obsolete. Through a time-consuming and meticulous process, he disassembles apparatus such as film projectors, 35mm film cameras, VHS tape players and record players. Piece-by-piece, the parts are painted white, the machines are then reassembled and photographed at different stages of being re-built. The photographed layers are themselves assembled into a single image, resulting in x-ray-like photographs that are reminiscent of architectural cyanotypes. These exquisite pigment prints provide the viewer with a rare glimpse into the internal workings of retro technology, that are at once beautiful for their simplicyt and ingenuously complex in their design. The precision inherent in the photographs bring to mind the idea of a technological taxidermy that removes nostalgia, yet performs the role of memento mori for machines that have become obsolete and may soon be forgotten. Max de Esteban (b. 1959) is a former Fulbright Scholar who studied Philosophy and holds a PhD from the Universitat Ramon Llull in Cataluna and a Masters degree from Stanford University. His work has been featured at Fotofestival 2010 in Lódz (Poland), where he was awarded the Grand Prix Jury's Special Award and at the FotoTageTrier 2010 Triennial (Germany). Also in 2010, he was awarded the Spanish National Award of Professional Photography Gold LUX and his work was selected for the 2011 Photographers:Network—resulting in his Elegies of Manumission series being featured on the cover of the distinguished ProfiFoto magazine. An interview about the same series was published in HotShoe magazine (Feb-March, 2011). More recently, he was name a Finalist for best Portfolio at Encontros de Imagem 2011. Max de Esteban lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.
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CORNELIA HEDIGER — Doppelgänger II
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LAND — Group Exhibition Marc Baruth, Tessa Bunney, Odette England, Paula McCartney, Jim Naughten, Simon Roberts, Lisa M. Robinson, Vojetch V. Slama |
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OCEANA — Lisa M. Robinson With Oceana, Lisa M. Robinson pursues her investigation into ideas of transition and evolution, representing this through a careful consideration of photography’s key elements and the representation of what she calls the “rhythms of natural time”. A key development in her artistic practice is a conceptual and visual shift from representing the subtle human presence of others, to imposing her own presence into the landscape, albeit metaphorically. The resulting photographs exude an ephemeral quality that maintains mystery, are exquisitely rendered and impose both a visceral and physical relationship with the viewer.
Lisa M. Robinson graduated cum laude from Columbia University and received her MFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She has won several awards including a Fullbright Grant, was an Evelyn Stefansson Nef Fellow at the MacDowell Colony and more recently artist-in-residence at the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego), Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Fidelity Investments amongst others. |
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EXPOSED — Antony Crossfield, Cornelia Hediger, Carla van de Puttelaar, Phillip Toledano This exhibition brings together the photographs of four exceptional artists, each working with the representation of the human form. The fabrication of individual male bodies into multi-limbed hybrids, makes Antony Crossfield's exploration of the male form at once unsettling, yet weirdly beautiful. Phillip Toledano’s highly-crafted images combine up-close physical observations that are imposing, detailed and display a dramatic illumination that is reminiscent of the chiaroscuro technique of Caravaggio. The psychological is played out in the compelling tableau vivants of Cornelia Hediger, whose pictorial narratives explore the conscious/unconscious. And, showing for the first time at the gallery, are the profoundly beautiful nudes made by Carla van de Puttelaar. |
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JIM NAUGHTEN — Re-enactors Naughten has investigated the phenomenon of re-enactment culture with a formal photographic rigour, that contributes to the role of photography in reinventing history. The portraits, themselves, are mostly three-quarter profile, from the legs up and with a stark, neutral backdrop. The striking detail of each image draws attention to the exactness of the costumes being worn and to the expressions of the subjects. Titled only with reference to nationality, unit and rank — nothing of the real lives of the individuals is revealed. The viewer is compelled to look and to wonder about who chooses to play a WWI Gunner, a US Medic or an SS Officer? Inspired by Richard Avedon’s In The American West, Naughten has stripped away the context of the participants, heightening the sense of artifice and, through photographic technique, sublimated his subjects. These flawless digital prints — that include tanks and battle scenes — chromatically echo photographs of the past, yet are undoubtedly contemporary. Jim Naughten (b. 1969) was awarded a painting scholarship to Lancing College and later studied photography at the Arts Institute of Bournemouth (both in the UK). Naughten’s work has been featured in a number of exhibitions and he is the recipient of several awards, including a commendation from The National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. Re-enactors was published as a monograph in 2009 (Hotshoe Books) and several photographs from the series have recently been acquired by The Imperial War Museum (UK). |
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PHILLIP TOLEDANO — A New Kind Of Beauty Brought together for the first time as a solo exhibition, these breathtaking and provocative portraits depict people who have reconfigured their bodies by means of extensive plastic surgery. The photographs raise questions about self-perception and social paragons relating to what constitutes perceived notions of beauty. Shot against a stark black backdrop, the large-scale portraits present subjects that are stunningly rendered and isolated. Toledano’s highly-crafted images combine up-close physical observations that are imposing, detailed and display a dramatic illumination that is reminiscent of the chiaroscuro technique of Caravaggio. Rather than presenting a study of physical augmentation that simply shows an apparent eradication of individuality via the surgeon’s knife, Toledano’s artistic achievement is the humanity that quietly projects from behind the faces of each subject—pride, hope, sadness, fear, awkwardness and defiance all abound. Despite their initial spectacle, the photographs emerge as gentle and respectful. Without a doubt, they engender a myriad of responses and debate. Toledano has certainly set the stakes high, both in terms of what he is depicting and the artistic methodologies used. Phillip Toledano (b. 1968) is a photographer living and working in New York City. Toledano's work is primarily socio-political and varies in medium, from photography to installation. His work can found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston) and the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum. His work has been widely exhibited in the US, China, France, Singapore and Spain. His first book, Bankrupt, was published by Twin Palms in 2005 and was followed in 2008 by Phonesex. His most recent monograph, Days With My Father, was published in Spring 2010 to critical acclaim. Days With My Father is a visually sincere and moving memoir of Toledano's life with his father, in the years prior to his father's passing, and will form a solo exhibition at Gallery 339 (Philadelphia) in Fall 2010. |
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ELAINE DUIGENAN — Micro Mundi & ODETTE ENGLAND — As Above So Below With Micro Mundi, Elaine Duigenan continues her fascination with transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. In this intimate series of images, she has photographed the arterial wanderings of snails, as they graze upon algae, leaving behind an aftermath of claw-like patterns—caused by the rasping action of the snail’s spiky tongue. On a micro level, these rambling, chaotic and protracted patterns, attest to a seemingly plodding yet vigorous life-form. On a macro level, they’re dendritic appearance resemble earth’s estuaries as viewed from far above. By presenting the images within a circular frame, these stunning monochromatic photographs are transformed into floating planets, as we would imagine them to be on a cosmic scale. The planetary metaphor is further enhanced with titles that refer to cartographic terms of old, that placed Earth in a philosophical and religious setting. “Elaine Duigenan’s images in Micro Mundi show how the random exceedingly slow wanderings of a mollusk feeding can depict our planet’s network of paths, roads, and rivers as we view them exceedingly fast from the portal of space, circling our globe every 90 minutes.”—Leland Melvin, Astronaut. Odette England’s new body of work is also concerned with the sensory and philosophical interpretation of our world. The phrase, As Above So Below, refers to the widespread indigenous cultural belief that the heavens and earth are the foundation of all creatures, including themselves. In this context, land and sky are more than just geographical icons, they are mirrors in which they see themselves reflected. England has documented the vast desert landscape of Southern Australia, photographing the land and sky from a single standpoint as a double exposure, thus merging the space between as a primal ‘middle ground‘ in which humankind resides. The resulting color photographs are quiet, metaphysical studies that astutely span time and space. Odette England is an Australian artist currently based in London. She is a graduate of the University of South Australia and City of Westminster College (London). Her photographs have been exhibited in France, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. In 2010, she was named a winner of the Flash Forward Emerging Photographers award for the second year running. Elaine Duigenan is a British artist living and working in London. She is a graduate of Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her photographs have been exhibited in the United Kingdom, United States, Syria, China and can be found in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London) and The Museum of Fine Art (Houston). Paper for Micro Mundi supplied by Hahnemühle. |
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HELEN SEAR — Beyond The View In this new series of work, Beyond The View, Helen Sear continues her investigation into the sublime—and an engagement with the retinal and digital—through her innovative use of image superimposition and erasure. The dialogue between the artwork and viewer, as well as the labor of the artist’s hand, is enhanced by a shift in scale that emphasizes the artist’s concern with the viewer’s habits of looking. Beyond The View was photographed in and around the agricultural lands south of Milan, in response to the ‘hidden’ presence of women in this rural environment on the edge of the city. Within this context, Sear develops her interest in the presence of women within the clichés of landscape and portraiture, particularly referencing the Northern Romantic tradition of painting. This exhibition follows Helen Sear’s highly successful first show with Klompching Gallery in January 2009. Later that same year, she was named as one of the UK’s 50 most significant artist photographers by Portfolio. The artwork of Helen Sear (b. 1955) has been published in Arts Review, Creative Camera, HotShoe, Art Newspaper and Art Monthly amongst others. Her photographic practice has developed from a Fine Art background of performance, film and installation work made in the 1980’s with her photographs becoming widely known in the 1991 British Council exhibition, De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain, which toured Latin America and Eastern Europe. Collections holding her work include Ernst & Young, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Council (Rome) and the Paul Wilson Collection. She lives and works in Wales (UK). |
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BIRD WATCHING — Paula McCartney Paula McCartney’s Bird Watching series are exemplary, flawlessly composed photographs of a wide variety of perching birds. The diverse species are perfectly posed in a range of picturesque habitats across the United States, in settings that are pure wilderness. However, a closer inspection reveals stiff wire protrusions, over-dyed faux feathers and splashes of paint for eyes and beaks. In her amalgamation of natural settings with craft store songbirds, she has created a carefully enhanced landscape—a bird watcher’s dream. The work explores how nature and fabricated elements can combine to create a scene that questions what is natural, and whether being so holds any intrinsic importance. “In McCartney’s project there are no clear lines between fact and fiction. Like James Casebere or Oliver Boberg’s photographs of constructed models that at first glance appear to be real architectural spaces, she exploits the believability of photography and at the same time invites a mistrust of photographic evidence”.—Karen Irvine curator, Museum of Contemporary Photography. “These are gorgeous images, and in that sense, they are worthy of their subjects. She’s not laughing at us by drawing us into her fantasy, rather, she’s playfully reminding us that all photographs indulge in certain fictions...she takes us on a journey that is educative and inspiring”.—Darius Himes, editor, Radius Books. Paula McCartney gained an MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in California (2002). She has been the recipient of several awards including the MCP/McKnight Photography Fellowship (2007). McCartney’s photographs have been widely exhibited and her work is held in the collections of the Deutsche Bank, Walker Art Center, Museum of Modern Art and Yale University amongst others. Paula McCartney lives and works in Minneapolis. |
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COLLECTIVE MEMORY & BECOMING LANGUAGE — Doug Keyes Collective Memory is a provocative series of photographs, in which Keyes condenses the content of an entire book into one photograph, through the multiple exposure of the book’s pages onto a single sheet of film. The resulting layered image, re-presented at the same size as the original book, provides a wonderful symphony of colour and texture, of opaque pages rendered transparent and which conceal as much as they reveal. Iconic, and sometimes obscure, Keyes subjects range from Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat Comes Back to The Holy Bible to Damien Hirst’s I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life. These luminous photographs suggest a visualisation of knowledge stacking up over time, as well as evoking the experience of engaging with the book itself. The Becoming Language series, too, elicit photography’s relationship with time, memory and knowledge. In this series, multiple exposures of ubiquitous urban landscapes incorporate subliminal markers of public information. Keyes calls into question the building blocks of our knowledge of these spaces; whether it is developed through direct experience or whether it is a phenomena resulting from experience altered by the unconscious data collected from elsewhere. Keyes successfully links the images in both series to memory and knowledge of places and objects—it is stacked, blurred and softened. Information illuminates through the two-dimensional space of his photographs, but there remains an appropriate amount of space for ambiguity and conjecture. Doug Keyes lives and works in Seattle. Over the course of 20 years, his photographs have been exhibited at numerous venues across Northern America. Keyes is the recipient of a number of awards including the Ned Behnke Artist Fellowship, Behnke Foundation (1999), Review Americas (PhotoLucida) Photographer of the Year, Photo Americas (2001) and Juror's Choice Award, Project Competition, CENTER (2007). His photographs can be found in several notable collections including the Akron Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, LA County Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Museum of Fine Arts — Houston and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art amongst others. |
