Photo copyright by M.A. Katcher

Photo copyright by M.A. Katcher

 

Photo copyright by M.A. Katcher

 

 

Michael Katcher is a photographer. He is also one of the top talent agents in the business. Katcher was born in Brooklyn in a family of artists. He graduated from Emerson College in Boston with a BFA in Theatre. In 1989 he moved to Los Angles where he first worked as a casting director, casting television shows as The Wonder Years, The Larry Sanders Show, and Third Rock From the Sun. From there he went on to become VP of Casting at CBS where he oversaw the casting of comedies like Everyone Loves Raymond and The King of Queens. He currently runs the TV talent area at Creative Artists Agency.

His passion though has always been camera. In his series Ceci n’est pas une personne/This Is Not A Person he writes with his camera a modern REANIMATOR, imbuing inanimate bodies with life. The subject of his work is not a person, it is a mannequin he finds in a department store window. Katcher has an alchemist’s eye for character. When he shoots he also casts, anticipating the transformation of actors (in this case mannequins) into entirely different people in his mind’s eye. “When I squint my eye ever so lightly the mannequins become characters in my mind. A false indenty becomes a real one. They seem to come to life. Each one has its own story. I have only a few minutes to set the shot up using only natural lighting – the sun is starting to go down, while the store front lights start to illuminate. I crop before I take the picture. Usually one shot and I walk away. In processing there is no manipulation at all. I want colors to bleed into each other. Whether there is a burst of yellow or some shade of gray, the color makes the picture. I want the photograph to feel like an abstract painting.  When the lines are blurred things become something else.”

FEBRUARY 12 – MARCH 27, 2012
OPENING RECEPTION: SUNDAY FEBRUARY 12, 2012 6-9PM

Frank Pictures is located at 2525 Michigan Ave. A5 Santa Monica, CA 90404
Gallery hours and contact: Tuesday – Saturday 11:30 – 6:30 | 310.828.0211

By Jim McKinniss

Photo copyright by Matthew Brandt

Image copyright by Sam Falls

 

Image copyright by Matthew Porter

M+B is pleased to announce its participation at Art Los Angeles Contemporary from January 19 – 22, 2012 at the Barker Hanger located at 3021 Airport Avenue in Santa Monica, California. Please come visit us at Booth D6, where M+B will present works by gallery artists Matthew Brandt, Sam Falls and Matthew Porter.

Matthew Brandt (b. 1982, Los Angeles) received his BFA from Cooper Union in 2004 and MFA from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2008. Interested in physicality, process and landscape, Brandt’s ability to stretch the readings of an image, multiplying them both physically and conceptually, speaks directly to his interest in how images loom and meanings shift within a shared visual history. His Lakes and Reservoirs reflect the artist’s engagement with the great American landscape photographers, but with an ease, humor and youthful energy. Whether creating sodium gum bichromate prints of bees from a pigment created from the bees themselves, or leaving photographs of lakes soaking in the water of their source, his subject matter visually and physically informs the work. It is all part of Brandt’s continual investigation into the charge that imbues meaning within an image. His work is the clever manifestation of a photographic alchemist, satisfying the urge for the tangible and grounding us in the present. Brandt’s precocious talent has landed him in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Armand Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Elton John Collection. and the Statoil Collection. His recent solo exhibition at M+B was met with critical attention, selected by Modern Painters as part of “The 100 Best Fall Shows.” Brandt currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Sam Falls (b. 1984, San Diego, CA) received his BA from Reed College in 2007 and MFA from ICP-Bard in 2010. Recognizing the inherent linkage between painting, photography and sculpture, and striving to expand the mediums, Falls breaks down photographic content into form and color and back again. Whether photographing abstract compositions in his studio, or moving through the Met aesthetically framing paintings and sculptures the way a photographer would capture a landscape or portrait, Falls aims to negate the single isolated moment of a photograph’s creation. The final products are an amalgamation of three stages of production: photographic, digital and physical. The viewer is not looking at a photograph depicting the past, but at a multimedia composition where the subject becomes the artistic production. This dynamism is celebrated in a recent review by critic Roberta Smith in The New York Times as she recognizes the “push-pull energy” and “thoroughly ambiguous, lushly radiant [and] slightly hallucinatory” nature of his work. His most recent installation at High Desert Test Sites, organized by Andrea Zittel in Joshua Tree, California, involved draping dyed fabric in the remnants of homestead cabins that dot the high desert landscape. The result is still forming, interpreting the idea of the photograph: embedded with time and light, precipitation , air, earth and vegetation. Falls is the 2010 recipient of the Tierney Fellowship, and his work has been exhibited in the US and abroad, including a solo exhibition at Fotografiska (Stockholm). He currently has two monographs published of his work: Color Dying Light (2009) and Paint Paper Palms (2011). Falls lives and works in Los Angeles.

Matthew Porter (b. 1975, Pennsylvania) received his BA from Bard College in 1998 and his MFA from Bard College and Bard-ICP in 2006. His work often features historical mash-ups, collapsing disparate events and cultural references within single frames or spreading them out over a series of tightly edited photographs. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Invisible Exports in New York, and he was included in the International Center of Photography’s Perspectives 2010. In 2010, he curated shows at Mount Tremper Arts in upstate New York and M+B in Los Angeles. Porter lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

For further information, please contact Shannon Richardson at 310 550 0050, shannon@mbart.com, or visit our website www.mbart.com. You may also view more information on the Art Los Angeles Contemporary website at www.artlosangelesfair.com.

M+B
612 NORTH ALMONT DRIVE
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90069
Phone: 310 550 0050
WWW.MBART.COM
INFO@MBART.COM

Art Los Angeles Contemporary runs January 19 – 22, 2012

Location:
The Barker Hangar
3021 Airport Avenue
Santa Monica, California
Thursday Opening Night: 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Friday & Saturday 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Sunday 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM

By Jim McKinniss

Image copyright by Ellen Butler.

Image copyright by Ellen Butler

Enjoy a collection of art work created by Long Beach and  Los Angeles area artists. Paintings (watercolors, oils, pastels), mixed media, drawings, sculptures, installations and photography.

Gallery Expo is a gallery dedicated to all artists, not just artists with the potential to become great. And, while we have some exceptional artists participating in our exhibits who are masters of their craft, we are also proud to be host to a wonderful array of emerging and upcoming artists.

Gallery Expo is committed to supporting and promoting artists and their work. While we do not limit our space to only Long Beach artists, we strongly believe in and promote the wealth of creativity that exists in our city and its surrounding areas.

Our exhibitions are usually thematic and, oftentimes, are interpreted, from each artist’s unique perspective, and designed to spark thought and discussion.  The gallery serves as a place where people can come together to discover the various cultures, traditions, lifestyles and philosophies that exist. So, come visit us, and come think and discuss art, and its power and influence in our lives. 

Artists’ reception will be held Sat., January 21, from 6-8 pm.

Exhibit runs through Jan. 27.

Location: The gallery is located in Bixby Knolls, in the EXPO Arts Center.

 4321 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90807

Hours: Fridays and Saturdays 4 – 8 pm

Phone: 562-427-7617

Contact: Douglas C. Orr mindsculptor1@verizon.net  or  David Rodriguez   d_rod_01@yahoo.com

By Jim McKinniss

http://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org/exhibitions/overview.asp

This exhibition runs through May 28.

By Jim McKinniss

Courtesy of Danielle Nelson Mourning and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles

 

Courtesy of Danielle Nelson Mourning and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles

Courtesy of Danielle Nelson Mourning and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles

Courtesy of Danielle Nelson Mourning and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles

 

Taylor De Cordoba is proud to present Ordinary Time, new photographs by San Francisco- based artist Danielle Nelson Mourning.

The exhibition will run from January 7 – February 11, 2012, with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, January 7 from 6 – 8PM.

For Mourningʼs second solo exhibition at Taylor De Cordoba, she continues her exploration of self- portraiture through photography and mixed media photographic paintings. In previous bodies of work, the artist represented her family history by assuming the roles of her ancestors from Mississippi, New York and Ireland (she literally slipped in and out of their homes, attire and settings to create this cinematic images). Mourning turned the lens on herself and set out to discover her own identity through the assumed identities of those who came before her. With Ordinary Time, the costumes are gone, as are the far-away locales. Rather, the artist is deeply invested in the present moment and capturing her sense of time and place on film. The resulting series of self-portraits is strikingly raw, honest and filled with intensity.

Providing context to the portraits are atmospheric photographs of landscapes and abstracted objects, which connect to the artistʼs Northern California upbringing – a hazy shot of the sun setting in Bolinas, a Native American Miwok tepee at sunrise in West Marin and a shattered mirror photographed from her Grandmother’s house are among the subjects Mourning photographs.. And while this new work is clearly a meditation on the present, the past continues to haunt Mourningʼs process. In the words of the artist, “This moment is an unveiling of the present yet there is always the past walking with me.”

The show is dedicated to the artistʼs grandmother, Ruth Catherine Nelson.

Taylor De Cordoba is located at 2660 S La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles, CA and is open from Tuesday – Saturday, 11am-6pm. For additional press information, please contact Heather Taylor at heather@taylordecordoba.com or (310) 559-9156.

By Jim McKinniss

Photo copyright by Irma Haselberger

Photo copyright by Irma Haselberger

 

Photo copyright by Irma Haselberger

 

Photo copyright by Irma Haselberger

 

I became familiar with Irma Haselberger’s photography via a closed group on Facebook. I was immediately struck by the visual impact of her photos and how they resonate with my personal aesthetic and emotions.

Irma Haselberger has been working as an artist and architect in Vienna for 25 years. Mostly her focus is urban street photography with ordinary people and how they interact with those around them.

For me Irma’s use of featureless blacks, light areas within the frame and the textures she introduces to the image add a magical depth to her photos. Irma uses Photoshop and Corel Painter to produce these effects by hand. She does not use Photoshop filters.

You can see more of Irma’s work at http://www.irma-haselberger.net/index.htm

By Jim McKinniss

Photo copyright by Britta Jaschinski

Photo copyright by Britta Jaschinski

 

Photo copyright by Britta Jaschinski

I’ve written about The London Column in previous posts on this blog.  The London Column describes itself as “Pictorial reports from the life of a city, 1951-2011.”

One thing I like about Lc is that the American reader is presented with a non-American perspective on photography. The articles and photos found on this blog are all well edited and quite interesting. You will find a link to Lc under the Web Links section on the right of this posting.

About Jaschinski’s photos Randy Malamud writes:

An otherworldly darkness permeates Jaschinski’s work, a troubling philosophical depth that touches both the animal inside the frame and the human spectator who is outside looking at the creature. A sense of uncertainty resonates in her photography—uncertainty about the animal’s context, the animal’s sentience, the animal’s feelings.  This sense of the unknown challenges the human audience’s habitual expectations of omniscient insight with regard to other animals.

I believe that it is wrong for us to see the monkey in the way we are seeing it, in a zoo, or even in a photograph from a zoo, and yet it is at the same time mesmerizing. Is this lar gibbon as fascinated by his spectators as we are of him? What does he think of us? We cannot know. The energy that Jaschinski’s image conveys is at the same time profound and profane. The longer we regard this gibbon, if we learn anything, it is how much we cannot know.

Our relationship with non-human animals is rich, intricate, and troubled.  People are fascinated by animals, and respond to them in ways that are at times full of homage and awe, and at other times oppressive and perverse.  We are prone to appreciate, or to fetishize, animals in isolation as discretely framed specimens (in a zoo, or as a pet, or a meal, or a toy) distanced from their groups, alienated from their contexts.  But still they are there, all around us.

What is wrong here?  What is missing?  Where is the viewer situated in relation to the subject? What is the connection between imagining and exploiting animals? What has the photographic aesthetic done – and what have we done – to capture, and to betray, these creatures? What are these animals doing as we look at the sliver of their existence that is frozen and framed in the moment of each photograph? What kinds of movements, instinctual urges, behavioral patterns are suggested in the picture?  And more to the point, what sorts of movements, instincts, and behaviors are suppressed in these images?  A large “negative text” pervades Jaschinski’s photography.  We are asked to see many things – habitat, activities – that are not there; we are confronted with their absence.

By Jim McKinniss

Photo copyright by Clyde Butcher

The G2 Gallery will premiere Clyde Butcher’s Visions of America, an exhibition of photography curated by Jolene Hanson. Consisting of over 30 signed, editioned silver gelatin prints, the exhibit brings together some of Butcher’s most beloved images from America’s National Parks, including Yosemite and the Florida Everglades. Art historians have called Butcher the natural successor to master photographer Ansel Adams. While Butcher is deeply influenced by the landscape photography of Adams, he prefers a more intuitive approach to capturing light, guided more by emotion and sense of place than the technical calculations that were Adams’ hallmarks. To make his visions come alive Butcher uses cameras ranging from 4”x5” up to 12”x20” requiring the use of custom-built enlargers to accommodate his massive prints. Clyde Butcher 2-2-2

In addition to being known for his large-format, black & white photography, Butcher is also his activism, which has brought international attention to the environmental issues facing the Florida Everglades, where he make his home. G2 Gallery director Jolene Hanson states, “Clyde’s passionate sense of place, and commitment to this fragile eco-system as revealed though his photography, is at the root of why his work is the perfect complement to The G2 Gallery’s environmental mission.”

The G2 Gallery will host an opening reception with the artist in attendance on Friday, January 20, 2012, from 6:30–9:00 pm.

 Guests planning to attend the reception should RSVP in advance to http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2504581270.

An artist’s talk will be held on Saturday, January 21, 2011, at 7:00 pm. Tickets can be obtained at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1960420671.

Admission to all exhibit-related events is $5 and will directly benefit the World Wildlife Fund. Additionally, The G2 Gallery will donate all proceeds from art sales to the World Wildlife Fund. A selection of work by Clyde Butcher will also be on view at The G2 Gallery’s booth at the LA Art Show in the Los Angeles Convention Center, West Hall A, from January 18–22. Tickets to the LA Art Show are available at http://laartshow2012.eventbrite.com/.

Location: The G2 Gallery (www.theg2gallery.com)

1503 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291-3742

Tel. 310.452.2842, E-mail info@theg2gallery.com

Contact: Gia LaRussa at 310.428.7752  gia@theg2gallery.com

Diane Shader Smith at 310.386.6803  dianeshadersmith@gmail.com

By Jim McKinniss

Photo copyright by Hiroshi Sugimoto

Photo copyright by Hiroshi Sugimoto

 

Photo copyright by Hiroshi Sugimoto

 

 

I’ve found that the great and near great photographers all possess a keen intellect. Many of you reading this will recognize the name Hiroshi Sugimoto. Sugimoto is (possibly)  known best for his Seascape and Theaters projects.

I was looking at his website a few days ago and saw a page called Colors of Shadow. The images above and the text below are from that page. You may judge for yourself the nature of his intellect.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Colors of Shadow

Starting from cracking nuts with rocks like apes, the use of tools has undoubtedly added to human acumen. The use of tools as extensions of our hands has greatly expanded our interaction with nature. Over such interactions, we’ve also acquired mental habits. In making arrows to shoot

 down

birds in flight, we’ve had to understand how birds fly, as well as how to flake and grind stone to make arrowheads. No sooner had humans grasped the notion of vertical gravitation and begun to walk upright, freeing our hands from ground movement, than we started picking things up as 

 tools and so developing our brain.

 I myself have done my share of inventing tools for realizing various art projects. My studio is more of a workshop Often they just don’t sell the tools I need for the job: like a simultaneous vertical- horizontal agitator to prevent uneven film developing for my Seascape negatives, or an “time- lapse anti-slip device” for shooting my Theaters, or a “super-wide angle bellows” for my

Architecture series..

 I’ve learned many things from using my hands. While I’m still not sure about the nature of light – whether it’s waves or particles – I’ve learned a thing or two about shadows. Thinking to devise a way of observing shadows, the project escalated into a major undertaking, requiring an entire hilltop penthouse in an older apartment in Tokyo. When surfaces receive light, the light effects varies according to the angle of exposure. Selecting three distinct angles -90°,55° and 35° – had the walls surfaced using traditional Japanese shikkui plaster finishing, which absorbs and reflects light most evenly. In the morning light, the shadows play freely over the surfaces, now appearing, now vanishing. While on rainy days, they take on a deeper, more evocative cast. I’ve only just begun my observations, but already I’ve discovered a  sublime variety in shadow hues.        

 - Hiroshi Sugimoto

By Jim McKinniss

Photo copyright by Helen K. Garber

Photo copyright by Helen K. Garber

 

Photo copyright by Helen K. Garber

 

Photo copyright by Helen K. Garber

 

dnj Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, “Encaustic Noir” by Helen K. Garber, to inaugurate Noirfest Santa Monica 2012. In Gallery II, we present a selection of vintage works by famed Parisian photographer Brassai and several of his contemporaries.

In her new work, Garber recycles imagery from an earlier photographic body, using a layered, textured technique to create completely new work. “Spending months on a 40-foot long technical nightmare for the 2006 Venice Biennale of Architecture started me thinking about … working with texture and dimension. I felt that I had mastered the 2-D image and that it was time to move on to something new.”  Taking her inspiration from film noir of the 40’s and 50’s and German Expressionism, Helen K. Garber’s work is evocative of the minimal black and white cinematic style. Garber uses an encaustic process to adhere her vintage negatives, printed on handmade papers, to reclaimed and salvaged wood scraps found locally in her local Ocean Park Historic District neighborhood and to finish with a fresh coating of beeswax and twine sourced locally from an old independent Venice shop. In this series, Garber has artistically found a way to reinvent her photographic library into work that is entirely new, with stronger, descriptive and expressive qualities.

This is Helen K. Garber’s second show with dnj Gallery. In the 2010 group exhibition, “Night Lights,” her series of photographs, “Venice/Venezia,” was included. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, with her most recent exhibition held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Ireland. Garber’s work can be found in numerous museum collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the George Eastman House International Museum of Film & Photography in Rochester, NY and the Brooklyn Museum. Garber resides in Santa Monica and maintains a studio on Ocean Front Walk at Venice Beach, CA.

dnj Gallery is also very proud to showcase a collection of vintage noir photography by artists Brassai, Paul Almasy, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Maurice Georges Chanu, Robert Doisneau, Andre Kertesz, Jean Prevel, Geza Vandor and Sabine Weiss. Each vintage print is rare, highly collectible and selected to showcase Paris by night. Images portray from high society, the intellectuals, the ballet, the grand operas, as well as scenes from the dark, bleak side of Paris. Brassai once wrote that: “he used photography in order to capture the beauty of streets and gardens in the rain and fog, and to capture Paris by night.” His iconic images, and those of his colleagues, have defined the Paris mystique.

SHOW DATES:   January 14 – February 25, 2012

RECEPTION:   Saturday, January 14, 7-9 pm

GALLERY HOURS:   Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm

2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite J1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Telephone  (310) 315-3551

Contact: Melissa Parkerson melissa@dnjgallery.net

By Jim McKinniss