ARTIST BREAKDOWN P.III: Photography is Dead...
Photography is Dead... Long Live Photography!
GROUP EXHIBITION
January 8 - February 20, 2021
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be highlighting works currently on display here at the gallery. Follow along here and on social media for some background on each maker and their process. The call for this show was centered around 2020: what were the artists’ works-in-progress? What was that one-off piece that felt right in the moment, but didn’t fit into a larger series? What was their current reality? What were their thoughts and feelings about the future?
Kei Ito, Radiant Children, 2020. Unique C-print Photogram Made with Sunlight and a Dissected Gas-Mask for Children; 17 x 15, and 21 x 11.5 inches, Framed. $3500. Inquire to Purchase
The mask has become a fixture in daily life for those who don't have the luxury of isolation, yet want to protect themselves and others from the ever-present and unseen threat of infection. With his photograms, appearing a bit sinister themselves, Kei Ito reminds us that this isn't the first time in our world's history that we've made attempts to protect the vulnerable amid calamity.
”’Radiant Children’ Is a set of C-print photograms made with exposing light-sensitive paper with sunlight and a dissected gas-mask for children. This artwork connects today’s pandemic with other historical crisis such as WWII, the Cold War and the Spanish Flu.
The small gas-mask is designed to keep children alive from a great invisible threat and it is now examined, dismantled, and forever captured on these prints as a symbol of the sacrifices that had been, are being, and will be made. It is now our responsibility to learn from the past to build a safer and bright future for the incoming generations.
This framed prints are recently made unpublished pieces that also acts as the beginning of a new series of 108. These ready-to-hang framed prints can be shipped in a secure box."
Paula Humberg, Kestrel, 2020. Archival Pigment Print, 20 x 14 inches, Framed. Edition of 6 + 2 AP. $2500. Inquire to Purchase
This piece by Paula Humberg is currently a collaborative work-in-progess. Humberg's fictional narrative concept combines some of our favorite themes of science and process.
"I'm a Finnish visual artist, collaborating with an American poet for this work-in-progress series. The series deals with planetary exploration, isolation and mental breakdown. By combining photography with poetry, we tell a very loose story of a scientist who is alone trapped on an unnamed planet. The scientist is trying to make sense of the biological samples that were brought to the planet, but his/hers mental health is falling apart. We get to see only fragments of their story and notes.
I'm using a lumen print technique for the series, meaning the images will be made on analogue photo paper that won't be developed but is instead scanned. I'm sending the exposed photo papers to the poet who will then, under red light, use a typewriter to write on the images. This image is one of the first I made for the series. Most of the other works that will be in the series will also include text, but they are still in progress and won't be ready until next year."
Nava Levenson, a love letter to citrus 1, 2020. Polaroid, Archival Ink Print, Collage, Poetry, 11 x 8.5 inches, Framed. Edition 1 of 7. $230. Inquire to Purchase
An element which becomes apparent in several pieces in “Photography is Dead...” is that of time: its stagnancy, its fragility, its fluidity. Nava Levenson’s love letter embodies each aspect of time, both living and dying before the eye. The slowness of written word and the intention of embroidery conflict with the immediacy of the Polaroid format, while the organic matter dries and withers, becoming the ultimate time stamp on the work.
The piece, one of a series of similar musings, reads:
“dear citrus,
you appear in traces around me as i turn your seeds in my dirty hands, i watch you shape yourself as a young hardy orange tree and the next day a proud meyer lemon bush- choosing your season wisely.
you sit knowingly in my window sill shrinking and shriveling happily. your dried slice slides - back and forth - with every turn of my lemon of 2000 crv.
your peel, stitched and molding to the front of my planner.
your half body hollowed out serves me as a vessel for my earrings at night-
remnants from one of the days you showed yourself to me as a grapefruit.
-nava”
Tom Ridout, A Time For Dance, 2020. Mounted Archival Pigment Print, 28 x 21 inches. Edition 1 of 2. $575. Inquire to Purchase
Among the number of works concerning fears, dread, or exhaustion, there are a few moments of happiness, even humor. Tom Ridout's joyous repurposing of action figures has elicit smiles, as well as a few chuckles, from its audience. Ridout's project, titled "The Moods of Men, " has evolved through a few revisions over the years, really began to take shape in the past year:
"I have collected small wrestling figures on and off for a few years. My intention was to photograph these figures in ways that changed the perception of the machismo, ego and physical violence that they were created to express. I wanted to push viewers into new directions and unfamiliar territory. As a young boy, I attended many wrestling events and was always fascinated by the duality of big dangerous-looking muscle men sporting fancy hairdos, colorful capes, and tights. I remembered the smiling Love Brothers, in their flowered shirts and pants. There was also Sweet Daddy Siki with his sequined capes, colorful boots and yellow hair. They all paraded into the ring, smiling and showing off in their sartorial splendor, then proceeded to (apparently) beat the daylights out of each other. I wanted to see what it would look like if they didn't do that. What if they weren't angry or violent? What if they weren't going to beat on each other? What if they danced together? or perhaps just frolicked around, smiling and shirtless? What if they consoled each other or expressed something beyond male anger and swagger? What would this look like? What meaning would it have?
In developing this series I have tried to create some simple joy as well as perception bending disorder. I want to challenge established male norms. My photographic/conceptual process continues to evolve as I see opportunities to create new narratives from the interactions of emotionally constrained figures."
Cristina Fontsaré, Kali as the Queen of Earth, 2020. Archival Pigment Print, 19 x 15.7 inches, Framed. Edition 1 of 10. $950. Inquire to Purchase
Eye-catching process, fiction, and spirituality converge in this series by Barcelona artist, Cristina Fontsaré, who picked her Polaroids back up during quarantine:
“The picture belongs to the ongoing series: Journey to the Center of the Earth. I started that project on July 2019 in a family trip around caves and ancient forest in the Basque Country in the north of Spain. It is an imaginary journey in the search for MARI, the main deity of Basque mythology. She is the manifestation of the divinized forces of nature. All beings and natural cycles are the different expressions of Mari. She is the whole nature, queen of the three kingdoms, mineral, vegetable and animal and the four elements: earth, air, water and fire. The pictures were taken with Polaroid peel apart film and stored in a box. I started working with the negatives during the lock down and at the same time I was reading the works by Jules Verne with my eleven years old daughter, as a way to travel to another imaginary worlds. The journey is on..”
Drew Nikonowicz, Sighting from Western Victoria, Mainland Australia, 2008 / 2020. Unique Digital Tapestry: Hand-connected 3D printed linkages from PLA filament, 46 x 56 inches. $1500. Inquire to Purchase
Drew Nikonowicz’s digital tapestries, made with 3D printed links, address the fragility of human perception and belief.
"This piece is part of a larger series of photographs and what I am calling Digital Tapestries. The project, I Know What I Saw, explores what it means to believe in the 21st century. Using images of and about the Tasmanian Tiger - an allegedly extinct animal - I am exploring the divide between factual truths and the fragility of our senses. We see what we want to see.
This specific piece is a still image from an alleged sighting of the tiger, reproduced as a tapestry by hand using small 3D printed 'pixels' which link together. When viewing sighting footage, we're asked to discern a lot from very little. However with these pieces, the closer you look, the more the image falls apart.”