Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Recently Opened: MOMA - New Photography 2010

Above Image: Amanda Ross-Ho, Irreconcilable Indifferences. 2010

Just can't get away from reclaimed photographs this year - here, there, everywhere!
Click HERE to view more images from the show.

Info on the exhibition from the MOMA website is below:

New Photography 2010
presents four artists— Roe Ethridge, Elad Lassry, Alex Prager, and Amanda Ross-Ho—whose photographs mine the inexhaustible reservoir of images found in print media and cinema. Ethridge takes his pictures in “editorial mode,” directly borrowing from commercial images already in circulation, including outtakes from his own illustrational magazine work. Lassry defines his practice as one consumed with pictures, meaning with generic images lifted from consumer society, such as Hollywood publicity stills and design illustrations. Ross-Ho’s hand-drilled sheetrock panels lined up with found pictures and mural-scale images of studio residues renegotiate the various stages of the creative process. Prager takes her cues from pulp fiction and the fashion images of Guy Bourdin to construct filmic narratives starring women disguised under synthetic wigs, dramatic makeup, and retro polyester attire. Infusing the seductive language of film and advertising with a touch of sly conceptualism, the artists included in New Photography 2010 explore the relationship between straight and constructed photograph, image and picture.

The exhibition is organized by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography.The exhibition is made possible by the Carl Jacobs Foundation.


Tuesday, September 28, 2010

2010 MacArthur Fellows!

See the links below to watch short videos on the work of the two visual artist selected this year.
Always a very exciting time! Genius Awards, whoo-hoo!!

Jorge Pardo - MacArthur Foundation

Jorge Pardo - MacArthur Foundation

Elizabeth Turk - MacArthur Foundation

Elizabeth Turk - MacArthur Foundation

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Two Photographers - Two Families


Top Image: Chris Verene, My Cousin Steve With His Daughter, His Wife Had Just Left Them, 1992
Bottom Image: Tina Barney, Marina's Room, 1987


Seeing the announcement for Chris Verene's new book Family (available from TwinPalms Press), made me think back to some of Tina Barney's earlier work - this thought occurred to me not only because of the inherent similarity and overwhelming discrepancy in terms of subject matter, but also because of conversations that have been taking place in the Memory & The Photograph seminar. I think it might be useful for students to have a look at these two very different photographic representations of family, especially as they relate to our discussions of autobiographical memory and identity formation.

Here is an excerpt from the press release from Verene's recent exhibition at Postmasters in New York:

CHRIS VERENE

"FAMILY"

Chris Verene's first show at Postmasters will present over forty photographs made during the past twenty-six years. This landmark exhibition of documentary storytelling chronicles a group of closely-knit characters from the photographer's family and their rural Illinois community. The photographer is also one of the characters-- his blood bonds and bonds of friendship within the small town are carefully spelled out in simple handwritten captions atop the colorful pictures. Verene's new book, "Family," published this summer, contains many of the images on view - it opens with his cousin Candi's divorce. Candi was made famous when her wedding picture appeared on the cover of Verene's first book ten years ago. Both husband and wife were fired in the Maytag factory closing described in President Obama's first address to the United States in 2004 and in the 2010 State of the Union. Theirs is not the only family torn apart by the economic struggles of the country, as Verene documents other similar stories. The exhibition will also bring to light recent developments in the artist's intimate life, as his young child, Nico, Brooklyn-born and half-Puerto Rican, appears throughout the latest photographs, playing with his cousins and newfound friends in Galesburg. This show will offer an extraordinary, inspiring, hopeful, and sometimes sorrow-filled view into the true personal stories and private lives of the artist's immediate and extended family in their small community as photographed throughout a lifetime in economically depressed Galesburg, Illinois. Museums currently showing Verene's work include The Tate Modern, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The New Orleans Museum of Art.

Above content from Postmasters Gallery

And here is an excerpt from the overview of "So The Story Goes" - an exhibition that included Barney's work at The Art Institute of Chicago:

Tina Barney has said, “I began photographing what I knew.” For much of the 1980s and 1990s, this meant taking pictures of her friends and family as they went about their daily lives in affluent areas of Long Island, New York City, and New England. Employing a large-format, 8-by-10-view camera enabled her to create highly detailed images that retain their focus and richness even when made into four-by-five-foot prints. Barney was thus one of the first photographers to present color work on a grand scale that rivaled most twentieth-century paintings. This scale also inspired a deliberate construction of the picture, at times requiring supplementary lighting and the direction of the sitters.

Barney’s photographs expose the emotional and psychological currents that course just beneath the surfaces of perfect trappings and banal gestures. In Jill and Polly in the Bathroom, such tension is evident in Jill’s strained expression, Polly’s turn away from Jill, and the distance between them that persists even in the cramped quarters of such a small room. Barney notes, “When people say that there is a distance, a stiffness in my photographs, that the people look like they do not connect, my answer is, that this is the best we can do. This inability to show physical affection is in our heritage.” While the myth that material comfort ensures personal contentment is an alluring one, Barney’s photographs undermine such illusions, even in later images in which the focus has shifted away from context to the personality and face of the sitter. In these more recent photographs of family and friends—many of which eliminate her directorial approach and allow for more self-presentation to the camera—Barney continues to make photographs distinct from family snapshots or formal group portraits in their refusal to serve as predictable commemorations of happy times, important gatherings, and ritualized affection.

Above content from The Art Institute of Chicago

You can see more of Verene's work HERE, or at his website, www.chrisverene.com
You can see more of Barney's work HERE and HERE


Thursday, September 23, 2010

In Defence of Stealing Photographs

Above image from iheartphotograph

...thought the gang from Memory and the Photograph would like to read this lovely little essay.

Click HERE to access the post from iheartphotograph

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Bastienne Schmidt at Southeast Museum of Photography

This exhibition is right here in our backyard - or sideyard, I suppose. The Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona is a venue we are fortunate to have so close by. I highly encourage all of you to make the drive over to see the exhibitions that make up their fall season (click HERE for more info).

I think the Bastienne Schmidt exhibition will be of particular interest to many of you currently enrolled in Rollins art/photography courses. There will be an artist's talk and book signing by the artist on October 30th from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Highly, highly recommended.

Below is an excerpt from the Southeast Museum of Photography website:

September 4 - November 7, 2010

HOME STILLS
Bastienne Schmidt


The Red Dress, Sagaponack, 2009


ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

This exhibition and book project uses photographs, large scale mixed-media pieces and film still images to explore female gender identity as it is refracted through popular culture. Schmidt challenges our visions of a domestic utopia with “tableaux” photographs of herself in the role of a “housewife” that re-stage many disconcertingly familiar scenarios and circumstances. Working strictly in her own home environment of suburban Long Island, Schmidt takes on the social context of a world of suburban fragmentation and loneliness with the presentation of the housewife character as a wandering, rootless protagonist.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Putting Memories to New Use - Sara VanderBeek at the Whitney

Sara VanDerBeek; Metro Pictures, New York and Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco

Read the New York Times review HERE.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Outpost: Harvey Benge – Against Forgetting

Above image from Harvey Bange - Photography/Art/Ideas
See below for a review of Harvey Benge's new artist's book from Outpost.

Outpost: Harvey Benge – Against Forgetting: "I was trying to recall the last occasion when an Auckland photographer looked closely at one of this region’s suburbs. I think that it was ..."

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943

Above Image: Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains. White Plains, Greene County, Georgia, June 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

I first saw these photographs earlier this summer - this image gallery has been making the rounds. It is WELL worth a look.

(Click link below to view more images)
Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 – Plog Photo Blog

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Selective Memory - Dance/Video/Performance

“Selective Memory,” with Madeline Best, at the Chocolate Factory.

Came across a review for this work today - sounds INCREDIBLY intriguing. Certainly relevant to those of us reading about memory and the photograph in the honors seminar, and also of interest to students in ART130, and of course related to much that we are/will be discussing in ART300. Good stuff.

Information on the piece from The Chocolate Factory website reads,

"Selective Memory is a real time video performance about nostalgia for relationships that never took place, events which never happened; a film which was never made, but which everyone remembers; exploiting the misappropriation of "real" sounds and images to confound, distort, remake and ultimately erase the truth."

Read the rest of the description HERE.
And read a New York Times review HERE.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Indianapolis Museum of Art to Represent U.S. at 2011 Venice Biennale

From the IMA website:

The Big News
The IMA has been selected to represent the United States at the 2011 La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) and present the work of Puerto Rico-based artist collaborative Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Often described as the Olympic games of the contemporary art world, more the 70 nations present the newest and best works from their respective countries every other year at the Venice Biennale. This year marks the 54th International Art Exhibition.

That's big news, alright.To read more, view the IMA website, or read the article posted today on the blog, Eyeteeth.

Landmark, Vieques, Puerto Rico, 2003 (above image from Eyeteeth)

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Seeing and Time: Video Art as Experience

Sharon Lockhart, Podwórka, 2009.
Installation at Gladstone Gallery, New York, courtesy the gallery.


Below is a great review of a recent show at Toronto's Power Plant, which I was fortunate enough to see in person. And yes, it did take some time to take it all in and truly consider the work. For my students who are perplexed with what to do when presented with time-based works, please have a read!

Seeing and Time: Video Art as Experience