PHOTOESPAÑA - Interview with Jem Southam

"Looking at the world with a camera is hugely rewarding."
- Jem Southam

Follow the link below to read the interview....

PHOTOESPAÑA

Levitating Man/Photographic Illusion = AWESOME!

Came across this today during my morning Google Reader routine on John Foster's Accidental Mysteries Blog. Foster himself found it on a blog by Richard Wiseman (a psychologist and magician!) - I just love the blog-go-round!

At any rate, the image is a wonderful example of truth and illusion in photography!

Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance

Opens Friday at The Guggenheim in NYC - can't wait to see this show in May!

March 26–September 6, 2010

Much of contemporary photography and video seems haunted by the past, by ghostly apparitions that are reanimated in reproductive media, as well as in live performance and the virtual world. By using dated, passé, or quasi-extinct stylistic devices, subject matter, and technologies, this art embodies a melancholic longing for an otherwise irrecuperable past. Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance examines myriad ways photographic imagery is incorporated into recent practice and in the process underscores the unique power of reproductive media while documenting a widespread contemporary obsession, both collective and individual, with accessing the past. The works included in the exhibition range from individual photographs and photographic series, to sculptures and paintings that incorporate photographic elements, and to videos, both on monitors and projected, as well as film, performance, and site-specific installations. Drawn primarily from the Guggenheim Museum collection, Haunted will feature recent acquisitions, many of which will be exhibited by the museum for the first time. Included in the show will be work by such artists as Marina Abramović, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Zoe Leonard, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, and Andy Warhol. A significant part of the exhibition will be dedicated to work created since 2001 by younger artists. This exhibition is curated by Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography, and Nat Trotman, Associate Curator.

This exhibition is made possible by the International Director’s Council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Additional support is provided by grants from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation. The Leadership Committee for Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance is gratefully acknowledged.

Douglas Gordon, Bootleg (Empire), 1998. Video installation, dimensions variable. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift of the artist, 2004.99

Above content from The Guggenheim-New York

Twitter with The Whitney?

Sure! Why not?

Have you ever wanted to ask a Biennial curator why they chose a certain work, or what it's like to try to capture what's going on in American art today? On March 23 you'll have a chance. Join 2010 co-curator Gary Carrion-Murayari and WNYC art critic Carolina Miranda for an online Twitter Tour of the Biennial. As Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times says, "For some of us, it may be the first time we visit the Whitney in our pajamas." Submit questions via Twitter using the hash tags #whitneybiennial or #whibi before or during the tour, which begins at 2:30 pm.

Above content from The Whitney Museum of American Art

Chrystel Lebas at Witzenhausen in Chelsea

I was so disheartened to get this announcement from Chrystel last week, as her show in New York will close before I have a chance to get up there. BUT....if any of you will be in the area between now and March 27, please go have a look.

I was fortunate to meet Chrystel while at a conference last year in the U.K., and she is a remarkable artist dealing with time, space and memory through the medium of both photography and video in a very subtle yet captivating manner. I recently purchased her book Time in Space for the Olin Library as well - go and have a look!

Information on her exhibition in New York is below:

Witzenhausen Gallery New York is proud to present work by French artist Chrystel Lebas. The exhibition is on show from February 25th till March 27th at the Witzenhausen Gallery in New York.

Chrystel Lebas’s work is drawn from her interest in looking at how landscapes contain psychological significance in relation to historical events, legends, Fairy Tales and our childhood memories and how to communicate these within an image.

She employs photography and the moving image, often pushing the apparatuses to their limits of their functionality to produce images. The works are mainly produced during the twilight hours, or as in the French expression, “Entre chien et loup”, translated in English as “Between Dog and Wolf”: the moment when twilight embodies the transition from dog to wolf, when it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between the howling sound coming from the two animals.

Above content from Witzenhausen Gallery

For more information on the work of Chrystel Lebas, visit her website: http://www.chrystellebas.com

New Yorker Critic Peter Schjeldahl's Whitney Biennial Review

...in audio slideshow format - a nice summation. He seems to find the show rather dull, but nice. He thinks we'll be glad, though, if we go!

Click HERE for the audio slideshow