Jessica Eaton – Polytopes at M+B Gallery
Photo copyright by Jessica Eaton
Photo copyright by Jessica Eaton
Photo copyright by Jessica Eaton
Photo copyright by Jessica Eaton
Photo copyright by Jessica Eaton
Photo copyright by Jessica Eaton
M+B is pleased to present Jessica Eaton’s first Los Angeles exhibition, Polytopes. Eaton’s latest work views the world through the capabilities of photography using a wide array of experimental, analogue-based photographic techniques such as color separation filtration, additive color theory, multiple exposures, motion blur, in-camera masking, cross polarization and lighting techniques. Building on her highly reviewed series Cubes for Albers and LeWitt (cfaal) with Polytopes Eaton develops more configurations from repeated fragments, constructing sculptural works on sheets of large format film. The haunting, luminescent images bloom and grow before the viewer, the result of layered time and additive color theory. Polytopes runs from November 3, 2012 through January 5, 2013, with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, November 3 from 6 to 8 pm.
Eaton shapes her latest artistic output “in camera” through multiple exposures and the use of different colored filters. In two new works, cfaal 276 and cfaal 279 the tactile, present nature of the work is exemplified through lush details of textured wood grain and large brush strokes radiantly depicted under added colors, their reflections offering up an engaging dimensionality to the work. Bold, vibrant angels energetically cut across space in Eaton’s Tri/Colour/Angles work, the moment of potential, surprise and experimentation revealed at their aligning points. The use of the artist’s studio as laboratory further expands in Eaton’s Interpolation Dramatizations and RGB Weaves – the artist’s analogue take on a digital solution. Through multiple exposures Eaton uses blur and stepped exposures to symbolize the bicubic smoother or Nearest Neighbor – interpolations algorithms used by imaging softwares such as Photoshop. Eaton’s process and the fascinating result is a conversation with the world, navigating the forces of time and space the viewer is presented with a striking sense of possibility.
Jessica Eaton (b. 1977, Regina, Saskatchewan) holds a BFA in photography from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work focuses on the possibilities of the medium and is often experimental in nature. Jessica has been the recipient of the Grand Prix du Jury for the Hyères Fashion and Photography Festival 2012, Foam International Photography Magazine Talent Call 2012, the Bright Spark Award for the Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Emerging Photographers from the UK, Canada and USA 2011, “Hey, Hot Shot”, Jen Bekman Gallery, 2010 and was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts research and creation grant 2011. Eaton’s photographs have been published in numerous publications including Foam, Border Crossings, The British Journal of Photography (cover March 2012), ARTnews (cover image March 2011), BlackFlash, Colour Magazine, Pyramid Power, Hunter and Cook and Lay Flat 02: Meta. Jessica Eaton lives and works in Montréal. This is her first solo exhibition at M+B.
For more info, please contact Alexandra Wetzel at M+B at (310) 550-0050 or alexandra@mbart.com.
M+B Gallery is located at 612 North Almont Drive, Los Angeles, California 90069
This exhibition runs through December 22, 2012
By Jim McKinniss
Dylan Vitone and Richard Gilles at dnj Gallery
Photo copyright by Richard Gilles
Photo copyright by Richard Gilles
Photo copyright by Richard Gilles
Photo copyright by Dylan Vitone
dnj Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibitions by gallery artists Dylan Vitone and Richard Gilles. The main gallery will feature “Leisure” by Vitone. Gallery II will display “Towers” by Gilles. These are both artists’ third solo exhibitions at dnj Gallery.
“Leisure” includes work from Vitone’s “Yellowstone” and “Rutland” projects. In “Yellowstone,” Vitone investigates modern society’s interaction with nature, capturing the throngs of tourists who flock to the historic park. In contrast, in the “Rutland” project, Vitone explores less mainstream pursuits at Skatopia in southern Ohio. Photographing the skate enthusiasts who camp there, Vitone looks beyond the tough exterior of youth counterculture to find an underlying beauty and naïveté. Together, the projects form a dialogue about the role of leisure in American society.
As with his earlier series, Vitone stitches together several images to create a nearly 360-degree view, which, as he states, “allows [him] to show simultaneously details and relationships at multiple spacial and perceptual levels….” “Working in the tradition of street photographers and social anthropologists such as Milton Rogovin and Bruce Davidson, Vitone makes extended portraits of communities through intimate observations of their everyday rituals.” (Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times, 10-24-08).
Vitone is an Associate Professor in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a B.A. in Photo-communications from St. Edwards University and an M.F.A. in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the country and is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Gilles’ “Towers” series in Gallery II captures pairs of vertical structures set against stark panoramas with ample skies and low horizons. He views the towers as “sentries standing watch over the landscape” and, with Google Maps to help him scout locations across the United States (including many in California and Nevada), is meticulous about adhering to the rigid formula of pairs. “Towers” is a continuation of Gilles’ ongoing exploration of the unnoticed and overlooked, and is an invitation to consider both the condition of the terrain and the symbolism of the structures occupying it.
Gilles earned his B.A. in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University. His work has been exhibited in California and throughout the country and is in the collections of the Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida and the University of California, Davis, Richard L. Nelson Gallery & Fine Arts Collection, Davis, California.
SHOW DATES: January 12 – February 23, 2013
RECEPTION: Saturday, January 12, 6 – 8 pm
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm
dnj Gallery 2525 michigan avenue, suite J1, santa monica, ca 90404 www.dnjgallery.net
For more information or images, please contact Cambra Sklarz at (310) 315-3551 or cambra@dnjgallery.net.
By Jim McKinniss
tPE member Kathy Shapiro to show at the Los Angeles Art Association
Photo copyright by Kathy Shapiro.
On December 1, 2012, Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA) will present the 2012 Open Show, LAAA’s signature survey exhibition of the very best emerging contemporary art. The 2012 Open Show is juried by Rebecca Morse, Associate Curator, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA).
Distinct by design, LAAA’s annual Open Show has developed into one of the most potent survey exhibitions of emerging art.
The opening reception is from 6 to 9pm on December 1, 2012 and runs through January 4, 2013 at LAAA’s Gallery 825.
Featured artists include:
Ted Andersen, Robert Boyd, Gary Frederick Brown, Ellen Cantor, Philippe Chambon, Charles Christopher, Joy
Curtis, Pam Dixon, Jeanne Dunn, Frances Elson, Jeanie Frias, Tina Frugoli, Josh Geyer, Matthew Miles Grayson,
Michael Griesgraber, Chong Hahn, Cindy Jackson, Caroline P.M. Jones, Motoko Kamada, Niku Kashef, Susan T.
Kurland, Sandra E. Lauterbach, Echo Lew, Heather J. Lowe, Matthew Marchand, Luigia Martelloni, Avery Mazor,
Crystal Michaelson, Rodney Millar, Tanya Nolan, Joanne Patterson, Karen Pendergrass, Osceola Refetoff, Alain
G. Roger, Joy J. Rotblatt, Larisa Safaryan, Samantha Senack, Cory Sewelson, Kathy B. Shapiro, Karen Sikie, Lisa
C. Soto, Fabrice Spies, Susan Swihant, Jane Szabo, Guillermo Valentin, Sasha vom Dorp, Jenny Wiener, Michael
Reception: 6-9pm, Saturday, December 1, 2012
Admission: Free
Location: Gallery 825 – 825 North La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles 90069
The 2012 Open Show runs through January 4, 2013.
For more information, visit http://www.laaa.org or call 310.652.8272.
By Jim McKinniss
Todd Walker “Between Light and Shadow” and Melanie Walker “Wanderlust” exhibitions to open at dnj Gallery
Photo copyright by Todd Walker.
Photo copyright by Todd Walker.
Photo copyright by Todd Walker.
Photo copyright by Melanie Walker.
Photo copyright by Melanie Walker.
Photo copyright by Melanie Walker.
Photo copyright by Melanie Walker.
dnj Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibitions featuring the work of father and daughter, Todd and Melanie Walker. “Between Light and Shadow” in the main gallery will highlight the pioneering work of the renowned photographer, Todd Walker. Gallery II will explore his influence on the photographs of his daughter, Melanie Walker, in her series entitled “Wanderlust.” This is dnj Gallery’s first exhibition of both artists’ work.
Todd Walker was a prolific visionary who rejected a successful career as a commercial photographer to pursue his own artistic ideas using alternative photographic and printing processes and emerging technology. dnj Gallery’s exhibition celebrates Todd’s unique interpretations of two of the most traditional subjects available: the nude and the landscape. This show emphasizes Todd’s concentration on “visual reality” and his desire to take a closer look at details. Consistent with Todd’s constant experimentation with different media, the exhibition features silk screens, lithographs, collotypes and digital prints. Many of the pieces showcase the Sabattier technique for which Todd is well known.
Regardless of the medium, Todd’s work is about a personal experience. He wrote, “For me, the image from the camera needs to be transformed into a picture. That transformation is an important part of my work. In addition to being involved with the image while using the camera, I must then concentrate that image, with my reaction to the illusions that I have about my environment, and form a concrete picture that attempts to describe and delineate my illusion.”
Todd was born in 1917 in Utah and was raised in Los Angeles. He began his career painting sets for movie studios while attending the Art Center School in Pasadena. Prior to his death in 1998, he was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Previously, he had held positions at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Florida, Gainesville. His work is in the permanent collections of prominent museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona.
For Todd’s daughter, Melanie Walker, photography facilitates a visual dialogue with her father. In “Wanderlust,” Melanie combines images from a decade of travels to investigate experiences of time, place and memory. In creating this series, she was influenced by her father’s writing: “I remember a time, I remember a place, I try to return, It is not here. / The time was here, the place was then. I am now, not then. / Place, time and I happened together, but not again.”
Melanie Walker is an Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Media Art Practices, Photography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She holds a B.A. from San Francisco State University and an M.F.A. from Florida State University. Her work is in the permanent collections of museums across the country, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona. Her work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions.
This show runs November 3, 2012 to January 5, 2013
Artist Reception Saturday, November 3, 6 – 8 pm
For more information or images, please contact Cambra Sklarz at (310) 315-3551 or cambra@dnjgallery.net.
dnj Gallery 2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite J1, Santa Monica, ca 90404
By Jim McKinniss
EDWARD BURTYNSKY Selections From a Private Collection at Fahey/Klein Gallery
Photograph copyright by Edward Burtynsky
Photograph copyright by Edward Burtynsky
Photograph copyright by Edward Burtynsky
Photograph copyright by Edward Burtynsky
The Fahey/Klein Gallery is pleased to present a selection of work from renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. This exhibition, curated (culled) from a private collection, features large format photographs documenting the extraordinary global landscapes created as a result of human industry— mining, quarrying, rail cutting, ship breaking, mass recycling, and oil refining. Produced with exacting detail in large scale, Burtynsky’s photographs exist in a delicate balance between a sobering reality and sublime beauty.
Specifically, this exhibition features a vignette of Burtynsky’s ambitious effort to document the staggering destruction of the Three Gorges Dam project—the world’s largest hydro-electric engineering feat to control the notoriously tempestuous and equally mythic Yanghtzee River in order to generate power for China’s booming population. This series, similar in spatial grandeur but palpably different from Burtynsky’s other work, is visually dense, apocalyptic, and ironically beautiful with each monochromatic vista of vast rubble resembling a traditional Chinese watercolor.
Although Burtynsky captures the consequences of our ever expanding footprint, he manages to evade the stereotype of an “environmentalist”, a movement which Burtynsky believes has largely failed. “It’s about messaging. It’s not about indicting.” Burtynsky has said in a recent interview. His photographs, which rarely contain people, successfully avoid making blanket judgments. “We are implied. There is an empathetic moment in my work. I see it as a thirty year lament at the loss of nature at our hands, at the expense of our expansion. Underneath every picture is that fact that nature is being pushed back and our footprint is just getting bigger. And I am that edge… trying to show that we are taking over more and more.” (Spread Art Culture Interview, September 2010).
“Burtynsky’s photographs appear to us as images of the end of time. The abandoned mines and quarries, the piles of discarded tires, the endless fields of oil derricks, and the huge monoliths of retired tankers show how our attempts at industrial ‘progress’ often leave a residue of destruction. Nevertheless there is something uncannily beautiful and breathtaking in the very expansiveness of these images – it is as if the vastness of their perspective somehow opens onto the longer view of things. For Burtynsky, nature itself, over time, can reclaim even the most ambituous of himan incursions into the land. As long as human needs and desires change, so too will the landscape.” (Lori Pauli, “Seeing the Big Picture”, Manufactured Landcapes, National Gallery of Canada, 2003)
Edward Burtynsky’s work has been exhibited and collected internationally. Burtynsky’s most recent monographs include China, Oil, Quarries, and the museum exhibition catalogue Manufactured Landcapes produced in conjunction with the first major retrospective of Burtynsky’s work organized by the National Gallery of Canada. Among Burtynsky’s many awards and distinctions include the TED prize and The Outreach Award at Recontres d’Arles. Burtynsky is an active lecturer on photography, and founder and president of Toronto Image Works, a landmark photographic lab and technical education facility in Toronto, Ontario where Burtynsky lives and works.
“..I try to photograph things that capture our imagination – that aren’t just records of something. There is a transcendent quality to the pieces that transport us away from reality to a world of wonder—[I want to be able] to show a place that is familiar, yet unfamiliar.”
This exhibition runs September 6 through October 20, 2012
Fahey.Klein Gallery is located at 148 North La Brea, Los Angeles, CA 9003
Phone: (323) 934-2250
By Jim McKinniss
MATTHEW NIEDERHAUSER Visions of Modernity at Fahey/Klein Gallery
Photo copyright by Matthew Niederhauser
Photo copyright by Matthew Niederhauser
Photo copyright by Matthew Niederhauser
Photo copyright by Matthew Niederhauser
Photo copyright by Matthew Niederhauser
The Fahey/Klein Gallery is proud to present Matthew Niederhauser’s unique vision of China’s consumer awakening, Visions of Modernity. Comprised of four distinct series, this extraordinary documenting of Beijing’s rapid social, economic, and technological development in the first decade of the 21st century highlights the unique and idiosyncratic directions of China’s unprecedented growth into, as Niederhauser calls it, China’s “Gilded Age.” As a new capitalist ethos pervades Chinese culture, Niederhauser’s Visions of Modernity documents the complex, fraught, and often-ironic stages of this epic transformation.
“Megablocks,” the first series in the project, examines the formation of a new Beijing surrounding the capitol’s former imperial core, and with it, a new vision of modern China. Megablocks form as huge swaths of land are fashioned into towering apartment high-rises interwoven with malls and public spaces. Once built, they form distinct urban islands, bounded by grand avenues and hemmed in by larger highways. Their imposing and monotonous facades mark an elaborate transformation of social practices that continues to occur at an alarming pace across the city.
As megablocks become the status quo across Beijing, they not only drastically reshape the city, but also the manner in which people consume. In 2006, Ikea opened a massive 430,000 square foot location in Beijing, currently the third largest in the world. Stimulated by the construction boom and the increasingly materialistic nature of today’s China, Beijing proved fertile ground for Ikea’s economical but trendy furnishing. In “Homes,” the second series in Visions, shoppers’ desirous looks and gestures abound as they settle into couches, armchairs, and beds, “living” in Ikea’s numerous showrooms. Each photograph suspends the customers in their appropriated Ikea environments, as if they were in their own residences. Here, new found nesting habits shaped by megablocks are satisfied.
In the new Beijing economy, no one wants to be a pedestrian, and vehicle purchases in China surpassed the United States for the first time in 2009. The biennial Beijing International Automotive Fair is ground zero for the consumer frenzy and ostentatious materialism of hundreds of thousands of Chinese car enthusiasts. Manufactures gather to capitalize on the seemingly insatiable demand for automobiles. Provocatively styled models strike poses in every booth while eager new consumers clamor to take a seat in their favorite vehicle in the giant exhibition halls. Niederhauser’s “Cars” series epitomizes the praxis of China’s reification and fetishism enabled by the increase of disposable income, opportunity, and a culture of consumption on overdrive.
But ownership is never enough, and acquisition does not quench the consumer drive. After Beijing’s nouveau riche tire of monotonous megablock apartments and endless traffic jams, they need a vacation. While a passport to the monuments and landmark of the world still signal the highest social status and opportunities of wealth, a favorite local travel destination for the upwardly mobile is the Beijing World Park. Tucked into the southwestern corner of the city, the Beijing World Park boasts over a hundred small-scale replicas of famous monuments and buildings from all over the world. The final series of the quartet, “Vacations,” captures staged encounters with objects of “modern” and “civilized” lifestyles, a bizarre artifact of the post-Communist materialism of China’s meteoric expansion.
Ultimately, Beijing serves as a template for China’s cultural ambition, and Visions of Modernity epitomizes the competing moral and cultural directions of the largest emerging capitalist market on the planet. Like many established first-world economies, the nouveau riche of Beijing spend most of their disposable income on homes, cars, and vacations. Niederhauser’s Visions frames the tension of desire and acquisition, the fantasy of consumer capitalism being lived out in the façades of Western imports. While China’s exploding population consolidates into ever increasing urban densities, the corresponding rise in wealth enables acquisition as fantasy fulfillment as a replacement for a culture being subsumed by mass-produced facsimiles of history, normalcy, and tradition. Visions of Modernity engages Beijing’s embrace of the mirage of consumer satisfaction, the quixotic pursuit of happiness through the possession of a never ending barrage of the new, the improved, the modern.
Matthew Niederhauser is an artist, photojournalist, and videographer currently chronicling the massive changes in Chinese culture. His photography has been featured in The New Yorker, National Geographic, New York Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, The NYT Magazine, Time, and several important international publications. He continues to develop his documentary projects in China and lives in New York when not abroad. This is his first show at the Fahey/Klein Gallery.
This exhibition runs September 6 through October 20, 2012
The Fahey/Klein Gallery is located at 148 North La Brea, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Phone: (323) 934-2250
By Jim McKinniss
PHOTOGRAPHY SCULPTURE FIGURE exhibition at M+B Gallery
Photo copyright by Sara Van Der Beek.
Photo courtesy of M+B Gallery.
M+B is pleased to announce PHOTOGRAPHY SCULPTURE FIGURE, a group exhibition curated by Matthew Dipple, with artists Daphne Fitzpatrick, K8 Hardy, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Mariah Robertson and Sara VanDerBeek.
Photography composes space in two and three dimensions. Sculpture exists within space and defines volume. Within these volumes and dimensions the figure exists dangling, dancing, laughing, living, hidden, exposed . . . somehow it all connects. Not like mathematics. Photography, sculpture and the figure are companions that know each other intimately. They can live without each other, but get on so well when they are together: they co-exist in space, sharing rhythms, textures and thoughts.
The exhibition Photography Sculpture Figure brings together five New York artists all working in photography and (frequently, occasionally or abstractly) in sculpture. These five artists also, but not always, address the figure in their work. The pieces in the exhibition explore photography, sculpture and the figure—and the unavoidable physicality that results—in differing combinations of movement, the body, identity and performance.
Daphne Fitzpatrick was born in 1964 in Long Island, New York and lives and works in New York City. Her work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; The Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA; ICA, Philadelphia, PA; LACE, Los Angeles; Sikkema Jenkins Co, NYC; Participant, NYC; Art in General, NYC; Colgate University, Hamilton, NY; Jack Hanley, San Francisco. Fitzpatrick has contributed work to the publications ARTFORUM, North Drive Press and Interview Magazine, and she has received grants from Art Matters and The Jerome Foundation.
K8 Hardy was born in 1977 in Fort Worth, Texas and lives and works in New York City. She has had solo exhibitions at Balice Hertling, Paris; Galerie Sonja Junkers, Munich, Germany; and Reena Spaulings, NYC; and her work was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennale at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY and the 2010 Greater New York exhibition at MoMA/PS1. She has performed at the Tate Modern, London; Artists Space, New York; The Serpentine Gallery, London; and the Transmodern Age Festival of Experimental Performance, Baltimore, Maryland. Hardy is represented in New York by Reena Spaulings and in Paris by Balice Hertling.
Sara Greenberger Rafferty was born in 1978 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited solo projects at The Kitchen, NY; MoMA PS1, NY; Eli Marsh Gallery at Amherst College, MA; and The Suburban, IL. She has participated in many group shows at venues such as the Aspen Art Museum, CO; Neuberger Museum of Art, NY; Gagosian Gallery, NY; Public Art Fund at the Metrotech Center, NY; and the Jewish Museum, NY. Her work is included in the collections of the MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Greenberger Rafferty received her MFA from Columbia University in 2005 is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York.
Mariah Robertson was born in Indiana in 1975, though grew up in California and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited widely including recent solo institutional shows at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, UK and Grand Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, as well as exhibitions at MoMA/PS1, NY; the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburg and recent inclusion in Out of Focus at the Saatchi Gallery, London. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA and is featured in an ongoing documentary for Art21 titled New York Close Up. Robertson is represented by American Contemporary in New York.
Sara VanDerBeek was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1976 and currently lives and works in New York City. She has had solo shows at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco; Whitney Museum of American Art; and The Approach, London. Her work has been exhibited at many international institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Guggenheim, New York and Bilbao; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C., all of which have included her work in their permanent collections. VanDerBeek is represented by Metro Pictures in New York and The Approach in London.
The exhibition will be on view from September 15 through October 27, 2012, with an opening reception for the artists on Saturday, September 15 from 6 to 8 pm.
For further information, please contact Alexandra Wetzel at (310) 550-0050, alexandra@mbart.com or visit the website at www.mbart.com.
M+B is located at:
612 NORTH ALMONT DRIVE
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90069
Telephone: 310 550 0050
By Jim McKinniss
Ann Mitchell: Unmade & Winter’s Light at Los Angeles Harbor College
Photo copyright by Ann Mitchell
Los Angeles Harbor College Fine Arts Gallery is pleased to present Unmade & Winter’s Light, New Photographs by Ann Mitchell. The exhibition will open with an Artist’s Reception on Saturday, September 15, from 4 – 7 PM.
Ann Mitchell was born in New York City and raised in California. After earning a BFA in Photography from Art Center College of Design, she worked as an award-winning advertising and editorial photographer for more than a decade. She then left commercial photography to pursue her own imagery, concentrating on urban landscapes and structures. In 1997 she completed her MFA at Claremont Graduate University and is currently Associate Professor of Art and Photography Program Coordinator at Long Beach City College.
Her photographs have been included in numerous solos and group exhibitions, and featured in a number of publications including LensWork, View Camera, Los Angeles, Better Homes and Gardens, Victoria, and Home Magazine. In 2007 Balcony Press released Austin Val Verde: Impressions of a Montecito Masterpiece, a monograph on the artist’s intimate examination of a prominent example of the Classic Estate period in California.
The photographs of Unmade & Winter’s Light are black and white archival pigment prints on handmade Nepalese paper. Unique in both texture and tone, the paper becomes a voice in each image, softening detail and providing a palpable luminance. This work shares the intimacy of Val Verde, but ups the ante. Representation and abstraction merge seamlessly in Unmade; images of a rumpled bed, empty in early morning light, are devoid of human presence yet rife with absence. The spare images of Winter’s Light provide a counterpoint to Unmade – here the land sleeps, bare trees become linear sculptural forms arrested in seasonal change. Everyday-ness is transformed; the familiar becomes an object of meditation.
Curated by Ron Linden, the exhibition runs through November 2. For visuals or additional information please call 310-600-4873. Gallery hours are Monday – Thursday, 11 AM – 4 PM, and by appointment. This exhibition funded in part by the generous support of Linda Lee Bukowski.
The Gallery is located at 1111 Figueroa Place, Willmington, CA
This show runs September 15 – November 2, 2012
Artist’s Reception: Saturday, September 15, 4 -7 PM
http://losangelesharborcollegefineartsgallery.wordpress.com/directions/
By Jim McKinniss
Photographer Douglas Beasley
Photo copyright by Douglas Beasley.
Photo copyright by Douglas Beasley.
Photo copyright by Douglas Beasley.
Photo copyright by Douglas Beasley.
Photo copyright by Douglas Beasley.
The following text appears in Aline Smithson’s LENSCRATCH blog.
The complete LENSCRATCH article can be read at: http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/08/success-stories-douglas-beasley.html?spref=tw
Known for his Vision Quest workshops and stunning photographs about Native Americans and the American West, Douglas Beasley is someone who has found a place in the world where the earth meets spirit. He lives in a passive solar home surrounded by trees in Saint Paul, MN and when not out traveling the world he can be found tending his Japanese gardens or enjoying a strong cup of coffee while listening to loud music.
Douglas received a BFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he also studied Eastern Religions and Native American culture. After working in a variety photo studios, he opened his own in Minneapolis, MN with an emphasis on commercial and editorial fashion. As a strong feminist, he considers himself the world’s most unlikely fashion photographer. This evolved into shooting throughout the country for various advertising, educational, public service and non-profit clients. He currently works on fine-art based commercial projects around the world.
As founder and director of Vision Quest Photo Workshops, Beasley provides workshops that emphasize personal expression and creative vision over the mechanics of camera use. His upcoming workshop, Zen and the Art of Photography at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon is running September 16th -21st. Douglas has also created Vision Quest cards that help keep photographers motivated.
William Eggleston: Los Alamos exhibition at Gagosian Gallery
Photo copyright by William Eggleston
I just wait until [my subject] appears, which is often where I happen to be. Might be something right across the street. Might be something on down the road. And I’m usually very pleased when I get the image back. It’s usually exactly what I saw. I don’t have any favorites. Every picture is equal but different.
—William Eggleston
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs from William Eggleston’s Los Alamos series. This will be Eggleston’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in over a decade.
A Memphis native, Eggleston carved his distinct oeuvre from the immediate world around him, incorporating all shades of life into his vivid photographs and thus pioneering an approach that derives its power from a refined form of spontaneous observation. A modern-day flâneur, he captures compelling fragments, events, and personalities of the ordinary world on the streets and in the parlors of small-town America. His subject matter, such as parked cars, billboards and abandoned storefronts, are seemingly banal, yet the idiosyncratic manner in which he orders his observations creates a world of enigma and unexpected beauty, unflinching in its veracity.
This exhibition comprises thirty-seven large-scale pigment images from the Los Alamos series, printed from vintage negatives. Some images were first printed in the 1970s as dye transfers. Others have never been seen before. Eggleston shot them on the road between 1966 and 1974 in the Mississippi Delta, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Los Alamos, and other locations across the United States, naming the Los Alamos series after the laboratory where atomic weapons were developed. In the intimate portraiture and stark landscapes, the profound influence of his aesthetic on contemporary image-making is plain. His self-professed “democratic camera” seeks out spontaneous moments of aesthetic exception—a neon light glowing piercingly in a darkened motel room; the back of a smooth, perfectly arranged grey updo; a collection of porcelain dolls; a gawky young man pumping gas. Tightly cropped and condensed, each object or subject assumes a narrative life of its own, charged with mystery and possibility. Geographically non-specific and seemingly timeless, the freedom and congeniality of these loosely framed portraits is a hallmark of Eggleston’s working style—emanations of a steadfastly egalitarian vision and a poetic eye.
Eggleston is largely credited with legitimizing color photography as a fine art form. More than a century after the advent of color film and a decade after popular media fused with contemporary art, his first museum exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1976, was also the first fine-art exhibition of color photography. Some thirty-five years after this historic moment, he continues to innovate in the photographic medium. The vibrant and exquisite dye-transfer process, that became a hallmark of his oeuvre, has limitations predicated on the size of available photographic paper. In recent years, advances in digital printing have allowed Eggleston to create his images on a much larger scale—44 x 60 inches—while equaling and even surpassing the quality of color saturation previously available only to the dye-transfer process.
William Eggleston was born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in Sumner, Mississippi. He studied at Vanderbilt University, Delta State College and the University of Mississippi. His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide including “William Eggleston and the Color Tradition,” the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (1999); “William Eggleston,” Foundation Cartier, Paris (2001, traveled to Hayward Gallery, London); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002); “William Eggleston: Los Alamos,” Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2002, traveled to Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serravles, Portugal; National Museum for Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway; Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Albertina, Vienna, Austria; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas through 2005); and “William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video 1961–2008,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008, traveled to the Haus de Kunst, Munich; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Art Institute of Chicago through 2010).
Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, September 27th, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm
For further information please contact Alexandra Magnuson atalex@gagosian.com
Location:
456 North Camden Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Phone: 310.271.9400
By Jim McKinniss
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