Thursday, December 11, 2008

VISITING ARTISTS spring 2009

AIB's Art in Context is proud to present
the visiting artists in spring 2009



Laura McPhee


Igloo Built Following Plans Downloaded from the Internet, Park Creek, Custer County, Idaho, 2005
From River of No Return




Lissa Rivera

Carve, 2008




Alessandra Sanguinetti

http://viewoncanadianart.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/26_ilfochorme_30x30.jpg
Madonna, 2001




Juan Jose Barboza Gubo













Pope Series 2, 2006-7
Oil on canvas, 6'x7'








Bill Burke

Bill Burke, I Want to Take Picture, Site 8
I Want to Take Picture, Site 8, 1986
From I Want To Take Picture

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

EXPOSURE

2008 Annual PRC Juried Exhibition
May 23 to July 2, 2008

Guest Juror Lesley A. Martin
Publisher Aperture Foundation Book Program

EXPOSURE features 14 selected artists of photography and related media whose themes include conflict, community, commerce, work and family.












Benjamin Lowy
From Iraq Perspectives, 2005-present


Robert Knight
Eli & Ben (#2), Chestnut Hill, MA 2006
From Dwellings






Martine Fougeron

From Tête-á-Tête I

Saturday, May 17, 2008

NEW YORK PHOTO FESTIVAL

The Future of Contemporary Photography
Curated by Martin Parr, Lesley A. Martin, Tim Barber and Kathy Ryan

DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York
May 14 to 18, 2008



Photograph Jonathan Smith



Exhibtion map

Visit New York Photo Awards

Friday, May 16, 2008

IN REVIEW Cai Guo-Qiang

Exploding Globally

Cai Guo-Qiang's I Want to Believe currently at the Guggenheim

Review by Jon Bakos


Photobucket
Inopportune: Stage One, 2004
Guggenheim exhibit I Want to Believe, 2008

Jon Bakos will be a senior BFA candidate at the Art Institute of Boston this coming fall. Jon's astute critical thoughts on contemporary art are reflected in his writings and discussions, which he shares on his website www.jonbakos.com. His work has been chosen for the second year to be included in TAKINGIN Best of AIB Photography.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Two Chinas: Chen Qiulin and Yun-Fei Ji

WORCESTER ART MUSEUM

Through September 21, 2008

Chen Qiulin, Bei Fu (Farewell Poem), 2003
Still from color video, 9 minutes, Stoddard Acquisition Fund, 2007











This exhibition considers the rapidly changing conditions in China through the lens of new acquisitions created by two young Chinese artists, Chen Qiulin (b. 1975) and Yun-Fei Ji (b. 1963). Both artists have responded to the altered landscapes and human displacement caused by flooding, which is a result of China’s Three Gorges Dam project. Chen Qiulin uses video in Bie Fu (Farewell Poem), from 2003, to revisit her childhood memories and China’s past amidst the rubble of Wanzhou, her hometown and one of the cities flooded by the dam project. In Yun-Fei Ji’s monumental scroll-like painting, Below the 143 Meter Mark, from 2006, allusions to classical landscape painting are transformed by grim contemporary details - houses and hillsides crumbling, a ghost town littered with abandoned bundles and bicycles.
(Excerpt from press release)

ABELARDO MORELL/ Bernard Toale Gallery

PICTURES in PICTURES

Bernard Toale Gallery
Boston

May 14 to June 28, 2008





















Santa Maria della Salute with Scaffolding in Palazzo Bedroom
, 2007

Thursday, May 8, 2008

TAKING IN @ AIB University Hall Gallery

The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University presents

TAKINGIN The Best of AIB Photography

Juried exhibit of The Art Insitute of Boston's best contemporary photography. The 2008 TakingIn jurors were Kristen Dodge, Co-Director of the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Jim Fitts, Director of the PRC, Arlette Kayafas of Gallery Kayafas and Rania Matar, photographer.

Book Release and Reception May 15, 6pm

University Hall Gallery
Porter Square, Cambridge
May 15 to June 15, 2008

Untitled 4
Paul Yem, Untitled, 2008

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

CHANTAL AKERMAN

Moving Through Time and Space

MIT LIST VISUAL ARTS CENTER
May 2 to July 6, 2008

Opening Reception May 1, 2008
6 to 8pm

The image “http://www.hoverground.com/chantal/chantal1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
D'est: Au bord de la fiction
(From the East: Bordering on Fiction), 1995

Chantal Akerman is widely regarded as one of the most important directors in film history. Since 1995 Akerman's artistic practice has melded documentary filmmaking techniques with video installation. Moving Through Time and Space explores her work in the crossover genre of film and visual art: D'est: Au bord de la fiction is a compendium of striking images of Eastern Europe and its citizens in the transition period following the end of the Cold War. Multiple video monitors retrace a journey that extends from the end of summer to the deepest winter, from East Germany, across Poland and the Baltic to Moscow. There is no narration and the film unfolds as a precession of beautifully chosen, enigmatic images in which Akerman captures the essence, if not the historical particulars, of a region on the move (excerpt of press release).
View complete Press Release

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Moscow - New York = Parallel Play

Chelsea Art Museum
New York
Until May 17, 2008


Selections from the Kolodzei Art Foundation Collection of Russian and Eastern European Art

Curator Natalia Kolodzei

THAW: RUSSIAN ART FROM GLASNOST TO THE PRESENT
Selections from the Gulman collection 15G exhibition at the Russian Museum, Marble Palace, St. Petersburg in 2007
Curator Marat Guelman and Juan Puntes


Left:
Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid, Soul of Norton Dodge (From the project Corporation for Buying and Selling Souls ),
wood, metals, white string, and certificate on red paper, 6-3/4x10-1/8x5-1/8 inches, 1978-79
Right:
Dimitri Gutov, Thaw , print from single channel video projection, 2006

ROBERT POLIDORI @ Edwynn Houk

VERSAILLES ETATS TRANSITOIRES

Edwynn Houk Gallery
New York
April 17 - June 14, 2008

http://www.bombsite.com/images/attachments/0000/6991/Polidori03_body.jpg
Velours Frappé, Salles Du XVIIème, Versailles 1985

Sunday, April 27, 2008

IN REVIEW New England Survey at the PRC

Read Michael Kasianchuk's review of the New England Survey exhibit currently showing at the Photographic Resource Center/ Boston University.


Barbara Bosworth, Untitled, 2004/ 2008
From the series Meadow, Carlisle, Massachusetts
Part of the exhibit New England Survey, PRC, 2008

Michael Kasianchuk is a Junior at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. His current work discusses themes of mass consumption, questioning our ways in which we consume and discard. For more information about his work visit www.kasianchuk.com

Through Weegee's Lens/ New York Times

By Niko Koppel

Self-taught photographer Jill Freedman returns to New York where she experiences a changed city and her own resurrection.
Gun Play, 1979






View slide show HERE

Thursday, April 24, 2008

IN REVIEW War Stories @ MassArt


WAR STORIES

Review by Katie Cantor


War Stories, exhibited at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Bakalar Gallery, presents photographs as well as video installations by contemporary artists Nina Berman, Jenny Holzer, David Thorne, Katya Sander, Ashley Hunt, Sharon Hayes, and Andrea Geyer. The work centers around the current war in Iraq and the events, politics and consequences of such war. When we view the work, we are asked to question what we are told from the government, interpret the facts and find truth for ourselves. The artists strive to show us just how unclear this war has been from the start and we are now five years in. And then there are the circumstances in which these young fighters entered the grueling battleground.
Nina Berman shows eight
large scale photographs of wounded soldiers from the Iraq War and provides text by the soldiers themselves. The men and woman speak of their reasons for joining whether it be to avoid violence in their hometowns, the look of the uniform, or lack of work, the motives are all very different. All between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three, none really knew what was in store.











Copyright Nina Berman

“Captain Tyson Johnson III” is a serviceman from Alabama and according to the army, he is 100% disabled now. He signed up for service to escape the violence of his community after two of his friends were found dead. He was injured in a mortar attack at Abu Ghraib. “Lieutenant Jordan Johnson” was in a humvee that crashed and smashed his legs and tail bone and sent him into a coma. He is left with limited use of his legs.











Spc. Tyson Johnson, 22, wounded in a mortar attack on Abu Ghraib prison

Berman has been criticized for her commercial and somewhat beautiful lighting, however I think it only makes the images more appealing. We are looking at the injured, the men and women who have risked their lives and changed themselves inside and out forever, most barely making it out alive. Shooting at night, in the heat of the early afternoon, and inside, if Berman had not used such bright lighting techniques, there would have been more obscure shadows or simply just darker photographs. I can understand that a less styled lighting scenario may be appropriate for the subject at hand, however, I really feel as though I can see the subject without searching through the shadows to read the image. There is a very contemporary style of using this spotlight effect when making a portrait and I think Berman has only used it to her advantage. She has taken a lighting technique now often found in photographs on gallery walls and replaced the portrait sitter with the deserving heroes of today. I think the images catch the attention of any passerby and for me that is the point. We as Americans must be knowledgeable about the events in which our country is engaged. With all of the falsities surrounding this war and this presidency, there are people like Berman and the other artists in the War Stories exhibit who have chosen to make it their responsibility to show the rest of us what the human consequence of this war really is. Some may disagree about the formal qualities of Berman’s images, but none argue that this subject matter is anything less than top priority.
Looking at the presentation, I think the show was set up well except for the Jenny Holzer space which I felt looked bare and inappropriately displayed. There was the feeling of a library or a study area to the space in that the atmosphere was quiet; there were videos to be viewed with headphones, a separate room for a more surround and intimate experience, as well as the rooms with the Jenny Holzer and Nina Berman pieces. At this point I really do not think there is anything I would change except the Holzer area. I was very pleased with the set-up as a whole and felt comfortable to make my way through each room at a slow pace and most important, learn. The whole atmosphere was inspiring, exactly how I feel in a library. I applaud Lisa Tung for the show she has put together. I hope it is visited often and especially by those contemplating their choice to go to war.


Katie Cantor is a graduating senior at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. She is the recipient of the 2006 Art Institute of Boston Portfolio Scholarship as well as AIB's Merit Scholarships between 2005-8. Katie was chosen for taking in: the best of aib photography in 2008 and her work has been exhibited at the Parsons School of Design, NY and the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, among others. Katie's senior thesis explores the aftermath of Katrina and how Americans have dealt with the complicated nature of traumatic experiences, specifically the contrast of the human experience (herself being a victim of Katrina) and its representation through media. For more information on her work visit www.katiecantor.com

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Antonio Lopez Garcia/ Art New England Review

From Mundane to Metaphoric: The Visionary Candor of Antonio López García by Andre van der Wende






















Sink and Mirror
, 1967-68
















Atocha
, 1964

Monday, April 21, 2008

Visiting artist DENISE MARIKA

Art Institute of Boston

Tuesday April 22, 2008
1PM

Denise Marika is a Boston based video artist well known for her site specific video projections and multi-media installations.
Within those installations and projections Marika has included her own body as platform and projection for her art. Her recent work Downrush, 2007 explores the viewer's complicity and passivity to current political and social events related to the consequences of war and genocide.

Denise Marika is a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is represented by Howard Yezerski Gallery. She is the recipient of numerous awards, such as the AICA International Critics Award in 2006, the LEF Foundation Individual Artist Grant in 2005. She has received grants form the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities.

VIDEO Leg 2005
A leg is stretched along the length of exposed tree root. The downed tree trunk and leg are both coated in grey clay, matched in shape, color and form. Slowly the leg moves along the trunk caressing its length.

VIDEO Downrush 2007
Downrush relies on the viewer’s complicity and passivity as witness to current events, conflicts, war, genocide and the associated loss of lives. In Downrush, a body wrapped in burial cloth rolls down the full length of a wooden stairway, the dead weight of the body hits hard as it cascades downward shaking the supporting framework.
READ BOSTON GLOBE REVIEW

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

HUMANKIND Work by the VII Artists

HASTEDHUNT
New York
April 17 to June 7, 2008

HUMANKIND
features work by all VII photographers, Marcus Bleasdale, Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Joachim Ladefoged, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey, Franco Pagetti and John Stanmeyer.


Alexandra Boulat
Women's Day in Mazar-e-Sharif's Hazrat Ali Shrine, 2004

Alexandra Boulat [1962-2007]
Daughter of French Photographer Pierre Boulat, who worked 25 years for LIFE magazine, Alexandra Boulat was born in Paris, France in 1962. She was originally trained in graphic art and art history, at the Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1989 she became a photojournalist and was represented by Sipa Press for 10 years until 2000. In 2001 she co-founded VII photo agency. Her news and features stories are published in many international magazines, above all National Geographic Magazine, Time and Paris-Match. She has received many International Awards for the quality of her work. Boulat covered news, conflicts and social issues as well as making extensive reportages on countries and people. Among her many varied assignments, she has reported on the wars in former Yugoslavia from 1991 until 1999, including Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo; the Palestinian and Israeli conflict, the fall of the Taliban, the Iraqi people living under the embargo in the 90s, and the invasion of Baghdad by the coalition in 2003. She also photographed Yasser Arafat's family life and Yves Saint Laurent's last show in 2001. Other large assignments include country stories on Indonesia and Albania, and a people story on the Berbers of Morocco. Her latest work was on Muslim Women in the Middle East and Gaza.

Alexandra Boulat was the architect of one of the most deliberate, focused and militant bodies of work on the victims - particularly women - of conflict and injustice of our time. (Bio HastedHunt)

Visit the Pierre and Alexandra Boulat Association

Christopher Morris
Farmington Hills, Michigan, 2004
From My America


Christopher Morris

Christopher Morris belongs to what is surely one of the most exclusive clubs in all of photojournalism: he is a "war" photographer. And though he balks slightly at being regarded as just a war photographer, the 42-year-old Time magazine contract photographer is, by his own estimate, one of "fewer than 20" photographers that roam the globe for the sole purpose of documenting violent social eruptions and armed conflicts.
In his career Morris has documented over 18 foreign conflicts. He provided up-close coverage of brutal drug-related violence in Medellin, Colombia; Guerrilla fighting in Afghanistan, and the United States invasion of Panama, and has made numerous trips to Russia and the former Soviet Union to photograph the vicious battles of revolution and resistance in Chechnya. Morris also provided extensive coverage of the Persian Gulf War, from the first deployment of United States troops until the final, climatic liberation of Kuwait. And most recently, Morris created some of the most human images to emerge from the devastatingly inhuman civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. For his work, Morris has been given a multitude of honors, including: the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award from the Overseas Press Club for his work in Yugoslavia; The Olivier Rebbot award also from the Overseas Press Club. The Magazine Photographer of the Year Award from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. The Infinity Photojournalist award from the International Center of Photography, and numerous World press photos awards over the years. (Bio HastedHunt)

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

IN REVIEW David Claerbout

MIT List Visual Arts Center

Review by
Shane Godfrey

Over the past three years at art school I have been to all types of shows. Photography, painting, installation video, sculpture; name it and I have probably been to a gallery showing it. Walking into the List for this massive show of David Claerbout (a time based media artist) I knew almost nothing about the exhibition. The giant semi-transparent screen instantly captivated me as soon as I entered the first room. The big mesh screen showed the first piece, but we could also look ahead into what was coming next, which made my anticipation grow. I stood at the first screen looking at an image (Shadow Piece, 2005) of a glass door and sidewalk for about four or five minutes and nothing was happening. I thought maybe it was a still image, but if it is a still image then why have the giant movie screen? I stayed around for a few more minutes and finally the shadows came rolling across the top of the first image. More life was brought into the image as people started to walk by; someone walked up to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. For the viewer, it became a spectacle to watch the person respond by looking inside the door, trying to open it again, and then eventually giving up and moving on down the road with the rest of the passerbys.
http://www.frieze.com/images/shows/Claerbout_2.jpg
Shadow Piece, 2005
Being able to see in the next room my anticipation for the next piece grew, so I moved on into the room to view three movies, including the first one seen when I walked through the door. In the center is a piece called The Stack, 2002. It is a 36 minute film with the sun moving across an underpass of a junction of highways. Over the course of the movie the sun moves and a homeless man sleeping under the overpass is illuminated. And on the left is a thirteen hour movie called Bordeaux Piece, 2001, which was shot over the course of a single day with the same actors, camera angles and dialogue. This is one of the more interesting pieces because the gallery is never open long enough to watch the whole movie even if someone would want to sit there for thirteen hours. The idea of the movie, and not necessarily the experience of viewing the movie, is why the piece so interesting. Sitting and looking at the left movie screen, you can see through to another room beyond that has two trees in an otherwise still image that are moving back and forth. Looking through the one movie to the other is visually compelling because the trees mirror each other and create a great layering and foreshadowing effect.Bordeaux Piece, 2001
The visual experience of the films themselves may not be what is great, but the ideas that drive them are what make them stay with the viewer. The idea of shooting a movie for thirteen hours, acknowledging that no one will ever see the entire movie, and then having me (the viewer) also recognize they will never see the entire movie is an extremely interesting connection that I had with the show. Knowing that the video is always going to be the same each time, except with subtle lighting differences from one showing to the next, make the work seem impossible to absorb all at once--or ever. I have that feeling about almost all the work that is in the show. There is such a concern with time and scale and length that being able to absorb everything is difficult, but makes it more intriguing to think about after experiencing the videos. http://www.kulturserver.de/home/kunstverein-hannover/ausst_98/Stack.jpgThe Stack, 2002
The amount of work shown as well as the scale of the installation makes it worth going to visit the exhibition. In the time I was there, I probably roamed around watching each of the videos at least three times and wound up being there for about an hour. I wanted to stay longer and see how each video progresses and changes over time. Actually wanting to stay and look longer is something I have yet to experience in a gallery setting. Also being in a gallery for more than ten minutes is extremely rare for me and in general for most viewers. I feel like the show begs to make you stay and in the process makes you completely lose track of time, it was a fantastic experience that I would love to go back and take part in again.

Shane Godfrey is a BFA candidate at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. His work is a hybrid of personal narratives, constructed photographs such as his Film Stills, 2006 and more recently photographs of daily encounters. For more information on his work visit www.shanegodfrey.com

Saturday, April 12, 2008

SHAI KREMER Broken Promised Land


JULIE SAUL GALLERY

April 10 to May 10, 2008
















View of a minefield, abandoned Syrian base, Golan Heights
, 2007


The Julie Saul Gallery is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition of photographs by Shai Kremer. Since 1999 Kremer has set about documenting the "ominous imprint of the military on the Israeli landscape- and reflectively, on Israeli society." Working in color in a beautiful documentary style, Kremer's vision is both clinical and emotional. The traditional Zionist attitude of a poetic affinity and love of the scorched and often barren Israeli landscape blends with the awe and disgust with the remnants and elements of Israel's longstanding violent struggles with their Arab and Palestinian neighbors... (excerpts from press release).

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

LARRY SULTAN Lecture

Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Tower Building/ Auditorium

April 23, 2008 at 6pm

http://mocoloco.com/art/sultan_mom_posing_dec_06.jpg
Mom Posing for me and Dad watching TV, 1984
From the series Pictures from Home (1982-1991)


The image “http://www.notifbutwhen.com/2/Sultan.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Sharon Wild, 2001
From the series The Valley

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

TINA BARNEY Lecture


PHOTOGRAPHIC RESOURCE CENTER

Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7pm

BU's School of Law Auditorium

765 Commonwealth Ave, Boston

The image “http://innumerablegoods.typepad.com/innumerable_goods/images/barney_1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.Copyright Tina Barney

FRANK GOHLKE Accommodating Nature


ADDISON GALLERY OF AMERICAN ART
Phillips Academy, Andover
April 12 to July 13, 2008

Grain Elevator, Homewood, Kansas
1973


Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke, a major mid-career retrospective of the artist Frank Gohlke will be on view at the Addison this spring. A leading figure in American landscape photography, Gohlke takes pictures that explore how we live and build our lives surrounded by a natural world that rarely meets our ideals and expectations. Whether photographing Wichita Falls, Texas, where he grew up; the grain elevators that punctuate the vast spaces of the Midwest; changes brought by the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens; or the neighborhoods of Queens, New York, Gohlke’s camera deftly captures the tension between humanity and nature, exploring how people adapt to the forces of nature both great and small, even within the confines of their own backyards. (Press release)

Monday, April 7, 2008

SZE TSUNG LEONG New York Times Review

Keeping His Eye on the Horizon (Line)
by Philip Gefter

Watch multimedia feature An Extended Landscape

Canale della Giudecca, Venice 2007

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

RALPH GIBSON Lecture

PHOTOGRAPHIC RESOURCE CENTER
Boston University/ Photonics Center
Auditorium 206
8 St. Mary Street, Boston

Thursday, April3, 2008
7pm
http://achfoto.com.sapo.pt/hf_653_34_ralph-gibson70.jpg
Gentle Reader
, 1970

Monday, March 31, 2008

SZE TSUNG LEONG

HORIZONS

YOSSI MILO GALLERY

April 3 to May 17, 2008

Fengdu II, 2002
From the Horizon Series

Horizons is an ongoing series of photographs, begun in 2001, that depict expansive but detailed views of a broad spectrum of environments throughout the world. The locations of the images may be distant in geography (including Mexico City, Cairo, Banaras, Lisbon, Isle of Skye, Tokyo, and Inner Mongolia, for example), and diverse in subject matter (ranging from pastoral landscapes, to monuments, to everyday spaces, to rivers, to industrial zones, to cityscapes), yet the photographs are linked by a horizon which continues in the same position from image to image. When placed side by side, the images form an extended landscape composed of an accumulation of varied continents, cities, terrains, situations, textures, and colors: an unfinished asphalt cul-de-sac lies before a line of tract houses in Victorville, California (2006); a boat drifts past icebergs in Jökulsárlón I, Iceland (2007); clumps of desert sand collect in front of a remote skyline in Dubai I (2007); red stone buildings seemingly hover over an opaque expanse of water in Canale della Giudecca I, Venezia (2007); beachgoers tread through mud on their way to the shore in Dungeness III (2003); boys play cricket in a clearing among electrical poles in Allahabad I (2008). (more of press release here)

Jessica Todd Harper


INTERIOR EXPOSURES


Cohen Amador Gallery
April 2 to May 10, 2008

Self Portrait with Christopher (Easter Dinner)

The Cohen Amador Gallery is pleased to announce “Interior Exposure,” an exhibition of work by the American photographer Jessica Todd Harper, from her newly published book of the same title. Harper’s sensual and luminous interiors trace the complex psychological connections among an extended web of family and friends....(more of press release here).

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

DANIEL BAUER at Andrea Meislin Gallery

THE COMBINATION OF LIMITS

Andrea Meislin Gallery
March 22 to May 3, 2008






Sans Personne á Qui Parier, 2008

The exhibition will feature an assembly of photographs, accompanied by a 'found' video, commenting on boundaries and borders in the Israeli spatial, temporal and conceptual continuum. Works divide roughly into the geographic polarities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the new city of Modiin, an amorphous sprawl in the foothills midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Ritual eruv demarcations become the recurring element of the Modiin pictures. Nearly invisible itself, the eruv twine makes visible other 'invisibilities' in the landscape. In the triptych Sans Personne à Qui Parler, the eruv activates the tell tale foliage evidencing the one-time Palestinian village, El Burge. Axes, situated several hundred yards to the east, catches the old north/south road that skirted the green line before it too fades into the landscape. As the road disappears on the horizon, infrastructures such as pylons and newly strung power lines, as well as the eruv, create a new dominating east/west axis. In the untitled black and white photograph from the western edge of Modiin, the eruv frames a terrain dotted with saplings planted by the Jewish National Fund, another form of demarcation – memory forests.

Two pictures from Bauer's Domino/Backgammon series depict the unfinished villa constructed by King Hussein of Jordan on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem. The first image, a manipulated one, is suspended in a whimsical state between high modernism – structurally mimicking Le Corbusier's Maison Domino – and the inevitable hybrid orientalist pastiche that would have been the ornamental end result had the villa been completed. The second image shows the view from the veranda of the villa, interwoven neighborhoods of greater Jerusalem settlements and Arab villages. With the detailed ceiling framing the scene in the foreground we are caught between utopian fantasia and 'facts on the ground.'

Bauer further investigates architectural specters in Gains/Losses. Large exaggerated panoramas of a mega-structure in the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel's first indoor shopping mall, are juxtaposed with a film loop of found footage showing the construction of the Bar Lev Line (Israel's Maginot Line-like fortifications on the Suez Canal that were overrun in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.) Both military line and civilian bunker (shopping mall) were built by the same contractors one after the other in the early seventies. Made of sand and cast concrete, they were resolute attempts to attain stability, to dig in, and to give assurance.

Composed View #2, situated just beyond greater Jerusalem in the Etzion settlement block, is a composed 'cropped' panorama. Here all 'framing' details are removed leaving only the juxtaposition of the Arab village with the Israeli settlement. The 'organic' Arab village blend into the hills, while the settlement rides the crest of the wavelike form of these same hills. The image masks the crime in the sublime. (Press release)

Domino and Backgammon, 2006














Daniel Bauer has shown in numerous international exhibitions including Gains/Losses, Art Focus, International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Jerusalem (1999), Borderline Disorder, the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2002), Territories: Islands, Camps and Other States of Utopia, Kunst Werke, Berlin (2003), Metamorphosis, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2003), Utopia and Other Facts on the Ground, Malmo Konsthaal (2004). He is a recent recipient of an MFA from Columbia University and currently teaches at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. This will be his first solo show in New York.

JEM SOUTHAM

Upton Pyne

Davis Museum and Cultural Center
Wellesley College, Massachusetts
March 19 to June 8, 2008
















The Pond at Upton Pyne, March 1999


One of the most significant photographers working in Britain today, Jem Southam creates photographic narratives of landscape transformed by time and humans. Upton Pyne chronicles the evolution of a small pond, the result of industrial waste on the site of a former manganese mine near his home in Cornwall, England. The artist describes the series as a “collection of histories,” which he gathered during regular visits to the pond during 1996-2003. The photographs detail a very particular place and the passing of time. They also address broader concerns about the relationship between humans and the natural world, from questions about the environment to debates on urbanization. Fundamentally, Southam’s work meditates on the human longing for an Arcadian past. (Excerpts from press release)

CREWDSON @ Aperture online














Copyright Gregory Crewdson

Crewdson is interviewed by Aperture to talk about his ideas behind his elaborate process of creating his images.

Monday, March 24, 2008

IN REVIEW Raymond Meeks

TOPSOIL at Candace Dwan Gallery

Review by
CHRISTOPHER SCHUCH


Raymond Meeks’ photographs in his latest show Topsoil depict a vast and barren landscape. Photographs of overturned soil seem to be taken from a perspective that suggests Meeks himself was lying on the ground. Repetitive images are only differentiated by their titles, indicating an exact date and time when the photograph was taken. Many of the photographs, often printed on vellum, speak of a cold, dormant ground which is, in reality, in a constant state of transition.

Left:
Untitled I, Romania 1993
Copyright Raymond Meeks

The viewer can deduct that in just months life will spring from this churned soil. The suggestion of continuous transition is relayed in further images depicting people within the landscape. Some present figures standing around a fire in the Untitled 1-3, Romania series while others reveal delicate moments with Meeks’ children and his immediate surroundings (some images resonating with those produced by Sally Mann).
Blackbirds appear frequently in the images proving, perhaps, that the soil remains fertile even in a dormant state. Their integrity is questioned, however, as one finds recurring figures and formations and sometimes an overwhelming amount of birds Meeks has been able to get so close to. Did these winged creatures exist in the landscape he photographed, or were they added later?

Right: An Observation Winter Garden, 2008, Copyright Raymond Meeks

Meeks comments that the photographs in the show are inspired, in part, by the works of Rick Bass who writes:
"You can rot or you can burn but either way, if you’re lucky, a place will shape and cut and bend you, will strengthen and weaken you. You trade your life for the privilege of this experience-the joy of a place, the joy of blood family: the joy of knowledge gotten by listening and observing."

The show is a glimpse into a period of joint dormancy and transition both in the landscape and in the individual. The show is accompanied by a few artist books, two of which are exceptionally beautiful and complete with toned silver gelatin prints. These seem to be the hidden gems of the show and are a treat to find resting quietly in the rear of the gallery.
















December 13, 2007 1:16 p.m.
Copyright Raymond Meeks

Christopher Schuch is a graduating senior at the Art Institute of Boston. His recent photographs investigate the harvest of natural resources and what becomes of the land during and after the process. For more information about his work visit www.christopherschuch.com

Monday, March 17, 2008

Visiting Artist NICK NIXON

THE ART INSTITUTE OF BOSTON
March 25, 2008

Nick Nixon
Ruth Bernett, Dorchester 2005



















(above)
Nick Nixon
The Brown Sisters 2004




(left)
Nick Nixon
The Brown Sisters 1975


Nicholas Nixon, born in 1947, is known for the ease and intimacy of his large format photography. Nixon has photographed porch life in the rural south, schools in Boston, cityscapes, sick and dying people, the intimacy of couples, and the ongoing annual portrait of his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters (which he began in 1975). Recording his subjects close and with meticulous detail facilitates the connection between the viewer and the subject. (Excerpt from Fraenkel Gallery)

Solo exhibitions include Museum of Modern Art, NY, Detroit Art Institute, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, St. Louis Art Museum, San Diego Art Museum, Dallas Art Museum, Chicago Art Institute, Musee de la ville de Paris, Toledo Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, LA County Museum and Cleveland Art Institute.

Nixon is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships (1977, 1987) and the author of several monographs,
Nick Nixon: Pictures of People (Museum of Modern Art), People with AIDS (text by Bebe Nixon, Godine), Family Pictures (Smithsonian), School (Robert Coles co-author, Little Brown), and Nicholas Nixon (TF Editores, Madrid). He recently received a grant to photograph the city of Luxemburg's new immigrant population in 2004-5.