Review: ‘Autumn Masterpieces: Highlights from the Permanent Collection’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 19th March – 18th May 2010

Curator: Mark Feary

Featuring Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk by Andrea Fraser (USA) as well as works from the collections of Hany Armanious, Liv Barrett, Polly Borland (UK), Steve Carr (NZ), Lane Cormick, Chantal Faust, Marco Fusinato, Tony Garifalakis, Matthew Griffin, Irene Hanenbergh, Christopher Hanrahan, Hotham Street Ladies, the Kingpins, Paul Knight, Andrew Liversidge, Rob McLeish, Callum Morton, Nat & Ali, Geoff Newton, Martin Parr (UK), Stuart Ringholt, David Rosetzky, Darren Sylvester, Christian Thompson, Lyndal Walker and Caroline Williams.

Autumn Masterpieces: Highlights from the Permanent Collection

Curated by Mark Feary, this is a deliciously ironic exhibition that asks the audience to question the social and political construction of the blockbuster exhibitions regularly held by large museums around Australia; to question the role of the curator in assembling such exhibitions; and to question the cultural value of permanent collections of ‘Masterpieces’. Autumn Masterpieces displays work that is anything but permanent and undermines the process whereby museums construct frameworks for social understanding. The work, displayed in a roped off space on plinths of various heights, in cheap frames and at skew-whiff angles, seems ephemeral and transitory all the more to contradict both main tenants of the title of the exhibition: masterpiece and permanence.

Sitting on plinths that are adorned with plastic gold name plaques emblazoned with the condition of the possibility of the works existence, “From the collection of …” , the untitled works reinforce the conceptual thrust of the exhibition. In one sense the content of the specific images seemed almost irrelevant; in another the collective dialectical argument of the images deconstructs normative interpretations of the masterpiece. ‘Instructions for the Tourist’ and ‘Rules for How to use the playground’ sit next to photographs of dejected clowns; ‘Confusion & Reversals’ sit next to ambiguous photographs of events and actions: people doing ‘normal’ things displayed though Polaroids, newspaper clippings, snapshots, photographs from albums, black and white and colour, framed and in museological glass cases.

The highlight of the exhibition for me was the guffaw inducing DVD Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk (1989) by American artist Andrea Fraser. Where Mark Feary found this post-cultural gem is beyond me but I am so glad he did! I stood transfixed as the narrator / curator takes us on a virtual tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, along the way pointing out the magnificence and subliminal beauty of the objects in the museum. She stresses the decorum of the institution, it’s tradition in measured, ordered, dignified arrangements that are fine and simple while addressing a water fountain. Oh the deliciousness! She continues with the exultation of the institution, that is to develop an appreciation of values – true / false, better / worse, right / wrong, what is good for you / what is good for society – standards that should be adopted by a discriminating public, while addressing a broom cupboard. The piece subverts an approach “in which visitors’ individual meanings are only validated by the extent to which they concord with the conclusions intended by exhibition-makers or to which they conform to some predetermined and fixed standard truth.”1 And so it goes in an ever so serious, side-splitting soliloquy, critiquing the functions of art, linking the aspirations of humanity with the highest privileges of wealth and leisure. Wonderful!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Hein, George E. Learning in the Museum. London: Routledge, 1998 quoted in Sandell, Richard. “Reframing conversations,” in Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference. London and New York: Routledge, p. 179.

Many thanks to Mark Feary and the CCP for allowing me to use the images in the posting. Please click on the last photographs in the posting for a larger version of the image. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition 'Autumn Masterpieces: Highlights from the Permanent Collection' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne

Installation views of the exhibition Autumn Masterpieces: Highlights from the Permanent Collection at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Courtesy of the collection of Tony Garifalakis

Courtesy of the collection of Irene Hanenbergh

Courtesy of the collection of Hany Armanious

Andrea Fraser. 'Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk' 1989 from the exhibition 'Autumn Masterpieces: Highlights from the Permanent Collection' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne, March - May, 2010

Andrea Fraser (American, b. 1965)
Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk
1989
DVD (colour video with sound. 29′)
Courtesy of the artist and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York

Centre for Contemporary Photography

No permanent exhibition space at the moment

Centre for Contemporary Photography website

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Exhibition: ‘Desire’ at The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Exhibition dates: 5th February – 25th April, 2010

Many thankx to the Blanton Museum of Art for allowing me to reproduce images from the exhibition in the post. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus

Olaf Breuning (Swiss, b. 1970) 'Brian' 2008 from the exhibition 'Desire' at The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, February - April, 2010

Olaf Breuning (Swiss, b. 1970)
Brian
2008
C-print
60 x 70 inches
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Glenn Ligon (American, b. 1960) 'Lest We Forget' 1998 from the exhibition 'Desire' at The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, February - April, 2010

Glenn Ligon (American, b. 1960)
Lest We Forget
1998
Series including cast aluminium or bronze plaques, colour photographs of plaques on site
Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York

Valeska Soares (Brazilian, b. 1957) 'Duet' 2008 from the exhibition 'Desire' at The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, February - April, 2010

Valeska Soares (Brazilian, b. 1957)
Duet
2008
Hand-carved white marble
Installation dimensions variable
Private Collection

Tracey Emin (English, b. 1963)
You Should Have Loved Me
2008
Warm white neon
Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

This February, The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin investigates the notion of desire in an exhibition of the same name. Curated by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Blanton curator of American and contemporary art and director of curatorial affairs, the exhibition features over fifty works from an international group of contemporary artists working in all media, including Glenn Ligon, Marilyn Minter, Petah Coyne, Bill Viola, Tracey Emin, Isaac Julien and many others. The accompanying illustrated catalogue will contain texts by art critics, fiction writers, poets, performing and visual artists, all written in direct response to the works of art in the exhibition.

Carlozzi states, “”Desire” is a complex human emotion and a driving force in our lives from childhood through old age. We all can recall examples of literature, film, and music that are rife with expressions of physical desire, but how do contemporary visual artists portray it, and all its attendant psychological states – anticipation, arousal, longing, regret, and so on? “Desire” assembles a really broad range of compelling works that together present a surprisingly diverse portrait of the experience.”

One provocative aspect of the exhibition is not its imagery, per se, but the manner by which many of the works translate intimate experiences into art a public expression. Marilyn Minter’s Crystal Swallow would seem to capture a private moment of visceral response, yet in such detail and exaggerated scale that it becomes a grotesque advertisement for arousal. Glenn Ligon’s series, Lest We Forget, commemorates those flickers of romantic fantasy that sometimes occur while people watching. And Tracey Emin’s You Should Have Loved Me is an accusation from a lover scorned, created with the neon light of public signage as if to broadcast raw feeling to an uncaring world.

Works by Kalup Linzy, William Villalongo, Olaf Breuning, James Drake, Petah Coyne, Gajin Fugita, Georganne Deen, Adam Pendleton, Peter Saul, Valeska Soares, Danica Phelps, Miguel Angel Rojas, Mads Lynnerup, Rochelle Feinstein, Richard Prince, Laurel Nakadate, Jesse Amado, Isabell Heimerdinger, Alejandro Cesarco, Eve Sussman, Robert Kushner, Luisa Lambri, Chris Doyle, and a dozen others, provide an engaging multi-generational exploration of desire. In addition, an informed selection of works of art from The Blanton’s print collection will add a historic counterpoint to the contemporary works on view.

Press release from The Blanton Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 17/04/2010

Will Villalongo (American, b. 1975)
The Last Days of Eden
2009
Cut velour paper
Courtesy the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York

William Villalongo (born December 14, 1975 in Hollywood, Florida) is an American artist working in painting, printmaking, sculpture, and installation. Currently based in Brooklyn, New York, Villalongo is also a professor at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York.

Villalongo typically focuses in his works on the politics of historical erasure, with a particular focus on the artistic reassessment of Western, American, and African Art histories. The artist states that his intention toward these reassessments evolves in part from the West’s histories of “taking African art objects and placing them on the side of the sofa to decorate, although that is not their purpose. We are obsessed with fitting a narrative, a story.”

His works engage with the black body, examining the influences of socialisation, history, occupation, dress, and speech on it. In many of his portraits, bodies emerge from “a tumult of white negative space cut out of black velour paper,” in ways that evoke leaves, branches, feathers, or slashes.

Villalongo is also influenced by Pablo Picasso, who incorporated African masks into his primitivist works, and Aaron Douglas who he credits as inspiring him. Villalongo reexamines the power dynamics of history and representation in his own pieces. “It’s problematic and interesting, and I wanted to think about how to use it and tell a story.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

Petah Coyne (American, b. 1953)
Untitled #1103 (Daphne)
2002-2003
Mixed media
77 x 83 x 86 inches
Collection of Julie and John Thornton

Petah Coyne (born 1953) is an American sculptor and photographer. She is known for her large-scale sculptures composed of unconventional, and often organic, materials, such as clay, silk, wax, and hair.

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024) 'Becoming Light' 2005 (still)

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024)
Becoming Light (still)
2005
Colour High-Definition video on plasma display mounted on wall
47.6 in x 28.5 in x 4 in (121 x 72.5 x 10.2cm)
Performers: John Hay, Sarah Steben
Photo: Kira Perov
Courtesy Bill Viola Studio

Marilyn Minter (American, b. 1948)
Crystal Swallow
2006
Enamel on metal
Promised gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein, 2007

Blanton Museum of Art
MLK at Congress (200 East MLK)
Austin, Texas 78701

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm
Sunday 1 – 5pm
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays

The Blanton Museum of Art website

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Four exhibitions in Albert Street, Richmond: Pamela Rataj at Anita Traverso Gallery, Claudia Damichi at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Steve Randall at John Buckley Gallery and Robert Boynes at Karen Woodbury Gallery

April 2010

Four interesting exhibitions in Albert Street, Richmond – from the beautiful, formed leather sculptures of Pamela Rataj to the wonderfully vibrant tropical bird, chair and decorative pattern paintings of Claudia Damichi; from the intensely observed canvas environments of Steve Randall to the post-photographic silk-screen textualisations of Robert Boynes. Well worth a visit on a Saturday afternoon!

As always, many thankx to the galleries for allowing me to publish the images in this posting. Please click on the images for a larger version.

~ Pamela Rataj. The Morphology of Forgetting at Anita Traverso Gallery. 7th April – 1st May 2010

~ Claudia Damichi. The Bitter Sweet at Sophie Gannon Gallery. 30th March – 25th April 2010

~ Steve Rendall. Security, Storage and Recreation at John Buckley Gallery. 8th April – 1st May 2010

~ Robert Boynes. Postscript at Karen Woodbury Gallery. 7th April – 1st May 2010

Pamela Rataj. The Morphology of Forgetting at Anita Traverso Gallery

7th April – 1st May 2010

Pamela Rataj (Australian)
Tangent Bundle
2009

Pamela Rataj (Australian)
Ravel
2009

Pamela Rataj (Australian)
Kairos
2009

How to draw a boundary between self and other, past time and today?

Patterns and forms in nature often resemble one another, connecting life forms in unexpected ways. Tide lines left in the sand resemble the grains found in a piece of wood, and the veins in a leaf or those in a hand.

The age lines in the trunk of a tree form as each outer layer covers the one preceding it and echoes its shape. This makes me think of the way past experience resurfaces as memory, receding or becoming more important at different times in our lives, as each new experience envelopes our previous states of being and yet is shaped by them.

The wrapped and layered forms in The Morphology of Forgetting explore coexistence and connection.

I dedicate this exhibition to my parents, whose recent deaths have helped me appreciate memory as a way to connect through time.

Pamela Rataj 2010

Press release from the Anita Traverso Gallery website [Online] Cited 10/04/2010. No longer available online

Pamela Rataj (Australian)
Faisceaux 1
2009

Pamela Rataj (Australian)
Faisceaux 4
2009

Claudia Damichi. The Bitter Sweet at Sophie Gannon Gallery

30th March – 25th April 2010

Claudia Damichi (Australian, b. 1972)
Birds eye
2010
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 41cm

Claudia Damichi (Australian, b. 1972)
Star Gazer
2009
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 41cm

Claudia Damichi (Australian, b. 1972)
Gridlock
2010
Acrylic on canvas
41 x 46cm

Claudia Damichi (Australian, b. 1972)
Reading between the lines
2010
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 41cm

Claudia Damichi’s surrealist still life paintings are characterised by vivid colours, elaborate patterns and distorted spatial proportions. In her paintings of domestic interiors, flowers, birds and furniture, colour is inflated and scale is playfully manipulated – solitary domestic interiors are reconfigured into places of fantasy and illusion. Inspired by the enduring aesthetic of modern industrial design, her surreal and theatrically staged scenarios self-consciously conjure a sense of the absurd. Graphic patterning, high-croma colour and whimsical compositions foster worlds that are at once playful and claustrophobic, satirical and real, tapping into an ambiguous nostalgia that leaves the viewer feeling that anything is possible.

Visit the Sophie Gannon website

Claudia Damichi (Australian, b. 1972)
Look out
2010
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 56cm

Steve Rendall. Security, Storage and Recreation at John Buckley Gallery

8th April – 1st May 2010

Steven Rendall (Australian born Britain, b. 1969; Australia from 2000)
Archive 1
2010
Oil on linen

Steven Rendall (Australian born Britain, b. 1969; Australia from 2000)
Archive 2
2010
Oil on linen

Citing the British artist Walter Sickert as an important influence on his painterly style, Rendall’s work displays a form and content that has attracted the attention of both critics and collectors. A key work in the exhibition is a large-scale painting on un-stretched linen titled Fountain (Rosemary’s Baby) that sprawls across 4.5m. Certain fountains, along with other apparently arbitrary images of television monitors, speedboats, clothing racks, shelving units and museum interiors are recurring motifs in Rendall’s paintings.

Rendall aims to ‘collect and synthesise’ images from around his home and en route to and from his Brunswick studio. Passing observations of window displays, charity shops and various light industrial warehouses are registered and recorded in conjunction with the accumulation of promotional flyers spruiking leisure activities and museum experiences. This shambolic collection of images is transcribed into an array of compositions in Rendall’s paintings. Images occasionally materialise in unlikely places, such as the spectral diver’s head that is resting on a warehouse shelf in the appropriately titled Storage.

In the exhibition Security, Storage and Recreation, you are invited to enter the image bank of Steven Rendall; a ‘wake in fright’ experience where one can become immersed and caught up in the maelstrom of the artist’s visual language – a sequence of painterly dreams each similar yet different to the last.”

Press release from the John Buckley Gallery website [Online] Cited 10/04/2010 no longer available online

Steven Rendall (Australian born Britain, b. 1969; Australia from 2000)
Flat Screens (Green)
2010
Oil on linen

Steven Rendall (Australian born Britain, b. 1969; Australia from 2000)
Pipes
2010
Oil on linen

Steven Rendall (Australian born Britain, b. 1969; Australia from 2000)
Claustrophobia
2010
Oil on linen

Steven Rendall (Australian born Britain, b. 1969; Australia from 2000)
Redacted 2
2010
Oil on linen

Robert Boynes. Postscript at Karen Woodbury Gallery

7th April – 1st May 2010

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942)
Street Runner
2010
Acrylic on canvas and velvet
120 x 242cm

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942)
Days that we forgot
2010
Acrylic on canvas

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942)
Signal Driver
2010
Acrylic on canvas and velvet
120 x 190cm

Postscript is Robert Boynes’ second solo exhibition with Karen Woodbury Gallery. This series continues with his exploration of urban themes, contemporary experience and experimentation into ways of using paint. In this most recent body of work Robert has employed the use of text in juxtaposition to various materials such as wood and velvet. The text conveys a feeling of noise and urban clatter, acting as a context and environment for the figures within the work.

His technique involves transferring photographic images to large silk screens and dragging paint through the mesh onto canvas. Robert thus has control in the manipulation of colour, density and translucency of the images. This process results in still moments that magnify and investigate everyday observable reality. The anonymous figures are juxtaposed with text and layering of saturated, contrasting colours, appearing objectified and ghostly.

These works embody a filmic quality, the multi-panelled paintings signify fragmented narratives and enquire into perceptions of time and space.

Text from the Karen Woodbury Gallery website [Online] Cited 10/04/2010 no longer available online

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942)
Body Type 2
2010
Acrylic on canvas

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942)
Body Type 3
2010
Acrylic on canvas

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942)
Things we leave behind
2009
Acrylic on canvas
120 x 180cm

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942)
The layered moment
2009
Acrylic on canvas

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942)
Postscript
2009
Acrylic on canvas
120 x 124cm

All galleries have closed except for Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond.

Sophie Gannon Gallery
2 Albert Street Richmond VIC 3121 Australia
Phone: +61 3 9421 0857

Sophie Gannon Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements’ at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York

Exhibition dates: 11th February – 24th April, 2010

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962) '#1 Untitled (Boy)' 1993 from the exhibition 'Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements' at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February - April, 2025

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962)
#1 Untitled (Boy)
1993
Gelatin silver print

Many thankx to the Nailya Alexander Gallery for allowing me to reproduce the images in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962) '#3 Untitled (Crowd 1)' 1992 from the exhibition 'Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements' at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February - April, 2025

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962)
#3 Untitled (Crowd 1)
1992
Gelatin silver print

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962) '#7 Untitled (Three Women Selling Cigarettes)' 1992 from the exhibition 'Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements' at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February - April, 2025

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962)
#7 Untitled (Three Women Selling Cigarettes)
1992
Gelatin silver print

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962) '#11 Untitled (Begging Woman)' 1999 from the exhibition 'Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements' at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February - April, 2025

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962)
#11 Untitled (Begging Woman)
1999
Gelatin silver print

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to announce Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements opening on February 11th, in her new space at the Fuller Building, 41 E 57th Street, Suite 704. The reception for the artist will be from 6-8pm. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am-6pm and by appointment.

This will be Alexey Titarenko’s first major exhibition in New York that features his entire St. Petersburg series (1991-2009). The four underlying sequences, or movements – to borrow a term from the vocabulary of music, which features prominently in the artist’s mind, are The City of Shadows, The Anonymous, The Light of Saint Petersburg and Unfinished time. Like music, the expression of time is a presence in Titarenko’s art, associated with literature and in particular, the works of Marcel Proust.

This majestic and history-laden city, where Titarenko was born in 1962, is the central subject of his photography, or to be more accurate it is the soul of the city and therefore that of Russia. As the artist himself explains:

“It would be en error to consider my photographs within the context of the values now fashionable in the arts in general and photography in particular. To align them with such and such a trend, without taking into account that their very purpose in existing is defined by the past. Even the most factual of them are not reportage, but a novel. The principal motivation for their creation is, in fact, always the same: Russia’s history throughout the 20th century, which is an unending series of tragedies of ever more baffling dimensions, whether you consider the wars, the famines or the so-called times of peace. The history of Russia … but in the form of rather contemporary images, made in a single location, a single city – St. Petersburg. Rather than the city (which is mostly only vaguely visible), these images represent emotion – the range of emotions forming the deep inner character of the people who lived in this country and endured all these disasters, people who were usually only represented from outside. And it is therefore these emotions which, in themselves, are quite general and have remained unchanged in the course of the century, like the emotions aroused by the music of Shostakovich, for example, or by the novels of Solzhenitsyn, which are the true subject of my photographs, and my goal would be to convey them to the viewer, to make him or her feel them … understand, to feel compassion and love.”

Titarenko was able to develop a form of expression reminiscent of Dostoyevsky’s stories, inspired by the moods and rhythms of the music of Shostakovich. Often, the city, veiled in winter’s shadows or bright with summer’s dazzle, is inhabited by nearly transparent phantoms. They dwell in its streets, cross its courtyards: crowds on the move, spreading over a vast square like a wave, their individual identities blurred and indistinct. Nevertheless, sometimes a few isolated, improbable figures emerge from the crowd. This photographic technique, involving relatively slow shutter speeds, confirms a taste for randomness and makes each image a unique adventure, a potential source of surprise. The approach also bespeaks Titarenko’s long-standing interest in 19th-century landscape photographers, especially those who operated in cities. In addition to this style of representation, which eschews any temptation to be objective and is finally quite impressionistic, the darkroom technique Titarenko uses transforms the black-and-white print into a composition endowed with subtle, suggestive hues and ever-differing nuances of gray. Titarenko never reproduces exactly the same rendering of light and shadow from one print to the next.

Press release from the Nailya Alexander Gallery website [Online] Cited 06/04/2010 no longer available online

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962) '#12 Untitled (Crowd 2)' 1993 from the exhibition 'Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements' at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February - April, 2025

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962)
#12 Untitled (Crowd 2)
1993
Gelatin silver print

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962) '#15 Untitled (Asking for a Smoke)' 1995 from the exhibition 'Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements' at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February - April, 2025

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962)
#15 Untitled (Asking for a Smoke)
1995
Gelatin silver print

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962) '#21 Untitled (Woman on the Corner)' 1995 from the exhibition 'Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements' at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February - April, 2025

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962)
#21 Untitled (Woman on the Corner)
1995
Partially toned gelatin silver print

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962) 'Untitled (Windows)' (Attic) 1993 from the exhibition 'Alexey Titarenko: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements' at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, February - April, 2025

Alexey Titarenko (American born Soviet Union, b. 1962)
Untitled (Windows)(Attic)
1993
Partially toned gelatin silver print

Nailya Alexander Gallery
41 E 57th Street, Suite 704,  New York, NY 10022

By appointment only

Nailya Alexander Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘East Side Stories. German Photographs 1950s-1980s’ at Kicken Berlin

Exhibition dates: 16th January – 17th April 2010

Sibille Bergemann (German, b. 1941) 'Untitled (Kirsten, Hoppenrade)' 1975 from the exhibition 'East Side Stories. German Photographs 1950s-1980s' at Kicken Berlin, January - April, 2010

Sibille Bergemann (German, b. 1941)
Untitled (Kirsten, Hoppenrade)
1975
Gelatin silver print

Many thankx to Kicken Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in this post. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus

Ute Mahler (German, b. 1949) 'Untitled' from the series 'Living Together' 1973 from the exhibition 'East Side Stories. German Photographs 1950s-1980s' at Kicken Berlin, January - April, 2010

Ute Mahler (German, b. 1949)
Untitled from the series Living Together
1973
Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1973
30.5 x 45.5cm
© Ute Mahler, Ostkreuz/Courtesy Kicken Berlin

Mahler was born in 1949 in Bad Berka, Thuringia. She studied at the School for Graphic and Book Arts in Leipzig and has been a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg since 2000. She lives in Hamburg and Lehnitz, near Berlin

Sibille Bergemann (German, b. 1941) 'Gummlin, Usedom' 1984, printed c. 1988 from the exhibition 'East Side Stories. German Photographs 1950s-1980s' at Kicken Berlin, January - April, 2010

Sibille Bergemann (German, b. 1941)
Gummlin, Usedom
1984, printed c. 1988
From the series The Monument, 1975-1986
Gelatin silver print
30 x 45cm
© Sibylle Bergemann, Ostkreuz/Courtesy Kicken Berlin

Kicken Berlin will devote its first exhibition of 2010 to a selection of East German photographers. Represented in East Side Stories: German Photographs 1950s-1980s are Ursula Arnold, Sibylle Bergemann, Arno Fischer, Ute und Werner Mahler, Roger Melis, Helga Paris, Evelyn Richter as well as Gundula Schulze Eldowy – committed art photographers who achieved their own modes of expression outside the official aesthetic. F.C. Gundlach’s fashion photography from 1950s and 1960s West Berlin will be on view in the exhibition space Kicken II.

Up until the early 1970s, the cultural officers of the German Democratic Republic viewed photography not as an art medium but rather as a means of providing affirmative and idealised images of life. Personal viewpoints were not welcome. Photography that forcefully “grew out of the self-assigned task of documenting what (one) felt was worth capturing,” as Evelyn Richter put it, had to remain secret.

Arno Fischer (1927-2011) and Evelyn Richter (1930-2021) belong to those who pointed the way toward a subjective-narrative, human-centered photography in the 1950s. Key figures in the East German art photography scene, opinion shapers, and teachers at Leipzig’s Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst / Academy of Visual Arts, they influenced a form of art photography oriented toward the social-documentary “human interest” tradition. Their stance combined social participation with a commitment to critical observation from a personal point of view – as in Fischer’s series Situation Berlin (1953-1960), with its symbolically dense snapshots of the divided city.

Important influences on the development of independent photography in East Germany included the work of the Magnum agency (from 1947 on), Edward Steichen’s exhibition The Family of Man (1955) as well as Robert Frank’s radically subjective street photography.

Pictures of people and portraits are at the exhibition’s core. Ursula Arnold (1929-2012) observed her sometimes melancholy, sometimes odd contemporaries on the streets of Berlin and Leipzig, and on Berlin’s S-Bahn. She gave up working as a photojournalist early in order to avoid having to make concessions to the dictates for enthusiasm imposed from above. Helga Paris (b. 1938) took portraits of rebellious Berliner Jugendliche / Berlin Youths (1981-1982), approaching her subjects with seriousness and thoughtfulness, and concentrating fully on them as individuals. She, too, had the self-professed goal of depicting people authentically in their everyday contexts.

Sibylle Bergemann (1941-2010) made a name for herself as a sensitive portraitist, fashion photographer, and observer of the urban landscape. Das Denkmal / The Monument (1977-1986), her long-term study of the assembly of the Marx-Engels sculpture, appears, with its hovering, headless sculptural fragments to emblematically anticipate the collapse of communism.

In the Berlin of the late 1970s and early 1980s Gundula Schulze Eldowy (b. 1954) found the setting for scenes that are as drastic as they are quotidian in the series Berlin. In einer Hundenacht / Berlin: in a Dog’s Night (1977-1989) and Aktportraits / Nude Portraits (1983-1986), as no other East German photographer before her, she shows with unsparing frankness the loneliness and vulnerability of her subjects but also their dignity and self confidence. Her early photographs reveal an aesthetic and thematic debt to the work of Diane Arbus.

Independent of each other, Ute and Werner Mahler turned their unpretentious gazes on the East German way of life. Ute Mahler (b. 1949) thematised family arrangements and group dynamics in her series Zusammen Leben / Living Together (1972-1986). Werner Mahler (b. 1950) documented a year in the Thuringian village Berka (1977) – and repeated his studies in the late 1990s after reunification. An additional focus of both photographers was fashion photography (published for the most part in the magazine for fashion and culture Sibylle) that offered opportunities for “productively expanding the genre” (Bernd Lindner).

In the 1950s and 1960s in Berlin and Hamburg, F.C. Gundlach achieved a modern way to stage fashion in pictures. A small selection from the great fashion photographer’s oeuvre, F.C. Gundlach, will be on view in the exhibition space Kicken II and coincides with the comprehensive retrospective at the Martin Gropius Bau.

Press release from the Kicken Berlin website [Online] Cited 04/04/2010 no longer available online

Evelyn Richter (German, 1930-2021)
ND (Neues Deutschland) print shop
c. 1960-1962
Gelatin silver print
Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen

Ursula Arnold (German, 1929-2012)
Berlin, S-Bahn
1965
Gelatin silver print

Sibylle Bergemann (German, 1941-2010)
Alexanderplatz, Berlin
1967
Gelatin silver print

Sibylle Bergemann (German, 1941-2010)
Schöneweide, Berlin
1972
Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1972
22.8 x 34cm

Ute Mahler (German, b. 1949)
Untitled from the series Living Together
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Ute Mahler, Ostkreuz/Courtesy Kicken Berlin

Mahler started her project Zusammenleben (‘living together’) to move away from set photography. She said: ‘I carried out this work freely, at liberty; it was very personal in nature and not commissioned’.

Zusammenleben was started more than 45 years ago. Through it, Mahler intended to depict the unsaid in a subtle way. Zusammenleben subtly depicted the reality of everyday life in the communist state of East Germany.

Evelyn Richter. 'Pförtnerin im Rathaus, Leipzig' (Receptionist in the Town Hall, Leipzig), c. 1975

Evelyn Richter (German, 1930-2021)
Pförtnerin im Rathaus, Leipzig (Receptionist in the Town Hall, Leipzig)
c. 1975
Gelatin silver print

Sibylle Bergemann (German, 1941-2010)
Berlin, Palast der Republik
1978
Gelatin silver print

Gundula Schulze Eldowy (German, b. 1954)
Berlin
1989
Gelatin silver print

F.C. Gundlach (German, b. 1926) 'Judy Dent mit Saga-Nerz auf der Avus' 1962

F.C. Gundlach (German, 1926-2021)
Judy Dent mit Saga-Nerz auf der Avus
1962
Vintage gelatin silver print
39.8 x 30cm
© F.C. Gundlach/Courtesy Kicken Berlin

Helga Paris (German, b. 1938)
Pauer from the series Berlin Teenagers
1982
Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1982
31.7 x 21.1cm
© Helga Paris/Courtesy Kicken Berlin

Kicken Berlin
Kaiserdamm 118
14057 Berlin

Tuesday – Friday 2 – 6pm & by appointment

Kicken Berlin website

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Exhibition: ‘Josef Albers: Innovation and Inspiration’ at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.

Exhibition dates: 13th February – 11th April, 2010

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
6 and 3
1931

One of my favourite artists – what a genius!

His exploration of colour and form is exquisite, sensitive and very moving – despite his belief that colours have no inherent emotional associations.

Marcus

Many thankx to the Hirshhorn Museum for allowing me to publish the images in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976) 'Rolling After' 1925-1928 from the exhibition 'Josef Albers: Innovation and Inspiration' at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., February - April, 2010

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Rolling After
1925-28

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Piano Keys
1932

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Steps
1932

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Untitled (Leaf Study)
c. 1940

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Structural Constellation, Transformation of a Scheme No.12
1950
Machine engraving on black vinylite mounted on board

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Structural Constellation, Transformation of a Scheme No.23
1951
Machine engraving on black vinylite mounted on board

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976) 'Structural Constellation, Transformation of a Scheme No.10' 1950-1951

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Structural Constellation, Transformation of a Scheme No.10
1950-51
Machine engraving on black vinylite mounted on board

Exhibition Illustrates Albers’ Sphere of Influence

The Hirshhorn possesses one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive collections of work by Josef Albers (b. Bottrop, Germany, 1888; d. New Haven, Connecticut, 1976). “Josef Albers: Innovation and Inspiration” presents nearly 70 works spanning the artist’s 55-year career, many on view for the first time. Supplementing pieces from the museum’s holdings are key objects on loan from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Organised by senior curator Valerie Fletcher, the exhibition also includes documentary photographs and examples of Albers’ teaching aids, and concludes with a display of works by artists who knew, worked with, studied under or openly admired Albers. The exhibition opens on February 11 and runs through April 11, 2010.

Josef Albers: Innovation and Inspiration encompasses the artist’s distinguished career from 1917 to 1973. The exhibition begins with four early self-portrait prints dating from the years of World War I, followed by a group of boldly abstract compositions from Albers’ tenure at Germany’s revolutionary Bauhaus, where he taught alongside such remarkable modernists as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. Albers participated in the school’s utopian aspiration to improve modern life through manufacturing and design-ideas that resonated throughout Albers’ career. The Hirshhorn’s show includes a series of black-and-white designs intended for mass production in glass, such as “6 and 3” (1931, see above), and an illuminated display of eight glass panels, in which the artist modernised and transformed the medieval tradition of stained-glass windows, best characterised by “Fugue (B)” (1925-1928).

Following the Nazi party’s rise to power, the Bauhaus was forced to close in 1933. Albers fled to the United States, where he was recruited to head the art program at the new Black Mountain College in North Carolina. There, Albers introduced a modified Bauhaus curriculum and hired vanguard modernists as teachers. He enthusiastically taught his students how art could be made from virtually any material, which he demonstrated in some of his own works, such as three “Leaf Study” collages (c. 1940, see above). Albers continued to advocate the clear structures of geometric abstraction, still mostly in black, white and primary colours, but was open to different stylistic approaches. He also briefly adopted the biomorphic forms associated with surrealism, as seen in the work “Proto-Form (B)” (1938).

In 1949, at the age of 62, Albers became chairman of the art school at Yale University, with a mandate to transform it from a conservative academic program to a proponent of modern concepts and applications. Believing firmly that colours have no inherent emotional associations, he meticulously explored their nuances and combinations in his work. He eventually limited the shape and number of his forms, which resulted in a standardised format that he called “Homage to the Square,” for which he is best known. Two dozen “Homage to the Square” compositions fill the central gallery in the exhibition, inviting viewers to examine the subtle complexities of their perceptions. The vivid yellow-orange-reds of “Glow” (1966, see below) startle the eye, while the pale grays of “Nacre” (1965, see below) suggest cool neutrality. These images create optical illusions, challenging viewers’ visual acuity. This series concludes with the artist’s vivid red-print duo, “In Honor of the Hirshhorn Museum,” on view for the first time since the museum opened in 1974.

In addition, this exhibition includes examples from Albers’ “Structural Constellation” series of reliefs (1954-1964, see above), which anticipated op art with their linear patterns. The reliefs’ commonplace material-laminated plastic-also fulfils the utopian goal of making art affordable to everyone. The two largest paintings on view, both titled “Variant” (1973), were donated by the artist’s wife and foundation in 1979.

Albers remained active and influential until his death in 1976, and many of his pedagogical innovations have become standard methodology in art schools across the country. His explorations of abstract form and colour also inspired and stimulated generations of artists and designers. Shortly after his arrival in America, he became a co-founder of the American Abstract Artists group and participated in exhibitions across the country, from New York to Michigan and beyond. The Hirshhorn’s exhibition ends with an array of works by colleagues, students and admirers, among them: weavings by the artist’s wife, Anni Albers; abstract constructions by Burgoyne Diller; streamlined images of labor by Jacob Lawrence; a large op art painting by Richard Anuskiewicz; textured creations by Eva Hesse and Robert Rauschenberg; and a minimalist stacked wall sculpture by Donald Judd.”

Press release from The Hirshhorn Museum website [Online] Cited 01/04/2010 no longer available online

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Homage to the Square – Soft Spoken
1969

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Homage to the Square – Porta Negra
1965

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Homage to the Square – Profundo
1965

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Homage to the Square – Nacre
1965

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Homage to the Square. Soft Edge – Hard Edge
1965

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Homage to the Square – Arctic Bloom
1965

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Homage to the Square – Blue Reminding
1966

Josef Albers (German, 1888-1976)
Homage to the Square – Glow
1966

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

The Hirshhorn is located on the National Mall at the corner of 7th Street and Independence Avenue SW, Washington D.C.

Opening hours:
Open daily 10am – 5.30pm

The Hirshhorn Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Peter Loewy. Drawings | An Exhibition with Photographic Portraits’ at Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich

Exhibition dates: 9th February – 11th April, 2010

Many thankx to the Pinakothek Der Moderne for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951) 'Dante Gabriel Rossetti' 2009 from the exhibition 'Peter Loewy. Drawings | An Exhibition with Photographic Portraits' at Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, February - April, 2010

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
2009
© Peter Loewy

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951) 'Ethnograpisch 1' 2009 from the exhibition 'Peter Loewy. Drawings | An Exhibition with Photographic Portraits' at Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, February - April, 2010

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951)
Ethnograpisch 1
2009
© Peter Loewy

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951) 'Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' 2009 from the exhibition 'Peter Loewy. Drawings | An Exhibition with Photographic Portraits' at Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, February - April, 2010

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
2009
© Peter Loewy

Over the past fifteen years, the Frankfurt-based photographer Peter Loewy (b. 1951) has gained prominence with a number of powerful series of works. His first book of photographs, Jüdisches (Jewish), was published in 1996, showing details taken from inside the family homes of both famous and unknown Jewish families in Frankfurt. This was followed by the volume Lèche-vitrine, as well as series on the IG Farben Building in Frankfurt and intimate pictures of the working environment of internationally acclaimed artists (Private Collection).

Loewy’s photographs of drawings by well and lesser-known artists from centuries past form a new cycle that is to be exhibited for the first time in the showcase passage at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München in the Pinakothek der Moderne.

Quite by chance the photographer came across a book on ethnography and was fascinated by the ‘photographic’ accuracy, use of perspective and shading of drawings of people from the most varied of cultures, depicted in their respective local dress. He switched off the automatic focus option, zoomed in so closely that only a detail could be seen, and selected a filter and distance that went against any standard logic until he achieved a rich blurred image. “I was thrilled”, writes Loewy. “On my display I had a picture that was out of focus, not a drawing. I felt as if I had brought the person back to life – that’s how full of himself a photographer can be compared to a draughtsman. … As a lover of drawings I felt I had to rummage through the history of art as well, or rather masses of books, and revive people from across the centuries in the form of photos. That’s how a mass of portraits of famous and unknown people came about. I also produced a collection of famous and unknown artists, too, who I enshrouded in a misty blurredness.”

Text from the Pinakothek Der Moderne website [Online] Cited 25/03/2019 no longer available online

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951) 'Petrus Christus' 2009

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951) 'Gustav Klimt' 2009

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951) 'Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn' 2009

Peter Loewy (Israel, b. 1951) 'Dante Gabriel Rossetti' 2009

Pinakothek Der Moderne
Barer Strasse 40
Munich

Gallery hours:
Daily except Monday 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 8pm

Pinakothek Der Moderne website

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Review: ‘Pondlurking’ by Tom Moore at Helen Gory Galerie, Prahran, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 10th March – 3rd April, 2010

Tom Moore Pondlurking installation photographs at Helen Gory Galerie, Prahran
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

My apologies to readers for the paucity of reviews of exhibitions in Melbourne recently. It is not that I haven’t been circulating around town to lots of exhibitions, far from it. The fact is that nothing has really rocked my boat, including my visit to a disappointing New 010 exhibition at ACCA, an exhibition redeemed only by the marvellous magnetic levitations of Susan Jacobs installation titled Being under no illusion (2010). Compared to the wealth of interesting work in New 09, work that still resides in my consciousness, the art in the current exhibition seems bland, the work ultimately and easily forgettable (a case of conceptual constipation?). Even though the exhibition lauds the collaboration between artists, designers, curators, architects, trades people and the kitchen sink in the production of the work, nothing substantive or lasting emerges.

No such problem exists with the exhibition Pondlurking by Tom Moore at Helen Gory Galerie in Prahran. Wow, this show is good!

It produced in me an elation, a sense of exalted happiness, a smile on my dial that was with me the rest of the day. The installation features elegantly naive cardboard cityscape dioramas teeming with wondrous, whimsical mythological animals that traverse pond and undulating road. This bestiary of animals, minerals and vegetables (bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks) is totally delightful. In the text Moving Right Along the curator Julie Ewington notes connections in Moore’s work to the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, the porcelain monkey orchestras of Miessen, parti-coloured hose of Medieval costume, the animals from Dr Suess’s books for children and Venetian glass figurines to name but a few. Another curator Geoffrey Edwards notes Moore’s accomplished technical skill in glass making, his use of lattice and trellis work in the figures themselves, namely the use of vetro a fili (broadly spaced) and vetro a retorti (twisted spiral) glass cane patterns.

While all of this is true what really stands out is the presence of these objects, their joyousness. The technical and conceptual never get in the way of good art. The Surrealist imagining of a new world order (the destruction of traditional taxonomies) takes place while balanced on one foot (see the installation image at the top of the page). The morphogenesis of these creatures, as they build one upon another, turns the world upside down (as in Web Feet Duck Bum below). Multi-eyed potato cars, ducks with eyes wearing high heeled boots and three-legged devouring creatures segue from one state, condition, situation or element to another in a fluid condition of becoming. This morphogenesis is aided and abetted by the inherent fluidity of the glass medium itself skilfully used by Moore in the construction of his creatures. While the photographs below isolate the creatures within a contextless environment it is when the creatures are placed within the constructed environment so skilfully created by Moore that they come alive.

The interconnectedness of this fantastical world (the intertextual relationship of earth, water, air, life) seeks to break down the binaries of existence – good / bad, normal / mutation, presence / absence – until something else (e)merges. Through their metamorphosed presence in a carnivalesque world that is both weird and the wonderful, Moore’s creatures invite us to look at ourselves and our landscape more kindly, more openly and with a greater generosity of spirit.

Not to be missed!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Nicola Stein and Helen Gory Galerie for allowing me to use the images below in the posting. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan

Tom Moore Pondlurking installation photographs at Helen Gory Galerie, Prahran
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Tom Moore (Australian)
Stylish Car
2008

Tom Moore (Australian)
Birdboat with passenger with a vengeance (left) and Robot Island (right)
2010 and 2009

A candy striped fish pokes its head up, all lipstick-pink kissable lips as a voyaging duck sprouts tree-masts and becomes duck-ship-island captained by a lone gherkin boy. Delinquent birds rampage while a crested birdcar peacefully unfurls sweet green shoots. A cardboard city burns and there’s something odd lurking in the pond, metallic and curiously tuberous, it regards it all with a wary eye.

There’s a whole world at play here. Growing, flying and always moving, this isn’t ours turned upside down but something other, a unique universe bound together with a logic entirely its own. Tubers take to the air, birds grow wheels and everything overflows with energy, pushing out green tendrils toward each other.

Tom Moore’s gloriously appealing glass creatures spring from his own fantastical imagination and the rich seabeds of the mythical, imaginary and grotesque. From mediaeval bestiaries with their camel leopards and manticores, to misericord creatures through Lear and Seuss to Moore’s reimagining of an Colonial Australian epergne as a verdantly plumed robot bird with resplendent palm tree, his creatures reuse, recycle and recombine in their never ending metamorphoses.

There’s an irrepressible joyousness in these creatures constant flux as they burst the boundaries of animal / vegetable / mineral and do away with taxonomies and rationality, reinventing themselves in happy disregard of all humanity’s rules.

While lurking seems antithetical to all this busy-ness, to skylarking fatbirds and peripatetic potatoes, the will to knowledge at the core of all lurking is what propels this endless becoming. This insatiable urge to simply find out is the engine of this prolific universe. As duck becomes island and man becomes bird, Moore’s creatures ask an eternal ‘what if?’ and an insouciant ‘why not?’

This transformative energy inheres in the material itself, in the mutable and alchemical nature of glass, in the fusing and melding of forms as light is captured within and bounces off lustrous surfaces. As glass flows through its changeable states, like water, like rain, so do Moore’s folk transform and evolve.

It’s this continuous moving through forms that hints at other meanings. Sharing forms, being made as it were, of each other and sharing an essential nature, each creature reaches out to every other in a net of relations in an intricately connected universe. These deep bonds, seen in their loving regard for each other speak of the delicate structures and balance of ecosystems and an absolutely necessary attention to and care for the world.

For there are no humans here and it seems that it’s this carelessness, this lack of attention to the fragile connections between the world and its creatures that’s the reason. The cities burn and cars rightfully become compost.

This riotous parade has pulled the artist too into their exuberant tumble. Becoming man-bird and greeting the day with a drumming bird song he is the harbinger perhaps of a new order, one bright green and sparkling.

Jemima Kemp, 2010

Press release from the Helen Gory Galerie website [Online] 20/03/2010 no longer available online

Tom Moore (Australian)
Web Feet Duck Bum
2009

Tom Moore (Australian)
Tasty Eyes With Five Friends
2007

Tom Moore (Australian)
Snarsenvorg the Devourer
2008

Tom Moore (Australian)
Segway
2009

Tom Moore (Australian)
Tree-Feet, Dollbird
2008

Helen Gory Galerie

This gallery is now closed

Tom Moore website

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Exhibition: ‘The Art of the Frame: Exploring the Holdings of the Alte Pinakothek’, Munich

Exhibition dates: 28th January – 18th March, 2010

Many thankx to the Alte Pinakothek for allowing me to reproduce the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus

Cabinet Frame German, around 1680 Kabinettrahmen | Deutsch, um 1680 | Inv.-Nr. R 2295 | Bild: Paul Troger, Simeons Lobgesang | Inv.-Nr. 10689 | Kat. Nr. 13 from the exhibition 'The Art of the Frame: Exploring the Holdings of the Alte Pinakothek', Munich, January - March, 2010

Cabinet Frame
German, around 1680
Image: Paul Troger, Simeons Lobgesang

Golden frame, Auricle or Lutmarahmen Dutch, around 1660 Goldene Leiste, Ohrmuschel-oder Lutmarahmen | Holländisch, um 1660 | Inv.-Nr. R 1404 | Bild- Caspar Netscher, Schäferszene | Inv.-Nr. 110 | Kat.Nr. 9 from the exhibition 'The Art of the Frame: Exploring the Holdings of the Alte Pinakothek', Munich, January - March, 2010

Golden frame, Auricle or Lutmarahmen
Dutch, around 1660
Image: Caspar Netscher, Shepherd’s Scene

Foliage frame German, around 1639 Laubwerkrahmen | Deutsch, um 1639 | Inv.-Nr. R 2331 | Bild- Anonymer Künstler | Inv.-Nr. 13031 | Kat. Nr. 6 from the exhibition 'The Art of the Frame: Exploring the Holdings of the Alte Pinakothek', Munich, January - March, 2010

Foliage frame
German, around 1639
Image: Anonymous artist

The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen do not just own vast holdings of framed pictures but also a huge collection of frames. For this exhibition, however, the selection was not made in the frame depot but solely in the painting depot at the Alte Pinakothek. It is only there in the museum’s holdings that the history of collecting frames and pictures can be traced. Some 4000 frames and pictures were sifted through and recorded, from which a selection of 92 frames was made. This exhibition focuses on the art and history of frames from four centuries, encompassing 16th-century case frames to Classicist and Empire style frames. This presentation covers all types of frame, from highly elaborate ones to miniature versions. Of particular note are the Dutch cabinet and Lutma frames, as well as inlaid examples and trophies from the Rococo period.

Artistic highlights in the exhibition are the frames made by Paul Egell (1691-1752), Melchior Hefele (1716-98) and Johann Wolfgang von der Auwera (1708-58). Frames by and after Joseph Effner (1687-1745), François Cuvilliés the Elder (1695-1768), Karl Albrecht von Lespilliez (1723-96) and Leo von Klenze (1784-1864) provide a fulminant conclusion to the exhibition.

Exploring the holdings of the Alte Pinakothek led the curator to impressive exponents of the art of the frame that originally came from the following galleries and cabinets: from the Grune Galerie at the Residenz in Munich, from the castles and palaces of Schleißheim, Nymphenburg, Ansbach, Bayreuth, Mainz, Passau and Wurzburg, and from the collections in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Zweibrucken.

The picture-framer, Karl Pfefferle, shows the various techniques used in making and gilding frames by looking at selected examples. The exhibition also provides an overview of the history of frames in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen which, thanks to the provenance of some of the works, are of particular interest as well as displaying an incredibly variety.

A comprehensive 264-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes a number of contributions on the production of frames, the depiction of frames in paintings and the history of frame collecting in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen. An essay by Verena Friedrich provides an insight into the most recent research on the history of frames carried out in Wurzburg.”

Press release from the Alte Pinakothek website [Online] Cited 11/03/2010 no longer available online

Mannerist framework South German, around 1600 Manieristischer Rahmen | Süddeutsch, um 1600 | Inv.-Nr. R 2348 | Bild- Bartholomäus Spranger, Beweinung Christi | Inv.-Nr. 2370 | Kat. Nr. 2

Mannerist framework
South German, around 1600
Image: Bartholomew Spranger, Lamentation of Christ 1546-1611

Ornamental frame in the style of the Rococo Mannheim, around 1750 Ornamentrahmen im Stil des Rokoko | Mannheim, um 1750 | Inv.-Nr. R 1174 | Bild- Adriaen van der Werff, Nächtlicher Kinderschwank | Inv.- Nr. 264 | Kat. Nr. 66

Ornamental frame in the style of the Rococo
Mannheim, around 1750
Image: Adriaen van der Werff, Nocturnal Children’s Swarm

Rococo style Ansbach, around 1740 Prunkrahmen im Stil des Rokoko | Ansbach, um 1740 | Inv.-Nr. R 1486 | Bild- Johann Christian Sperling, Markgraf Carl Wilhelm Friedrich von Brandenburg-Ansbach als 13-jähriger Knabe| | Inv.-Nr. 7181 | Kat. Nr. 25

Rococo style
Ansbach, around 1740
Image: Johann Christian Sperling, Margrave Carl Wilhelm Friedrich of Brandenburg-Ansbach as a 13-year-old boy

Alte Pinakothek
Barer Straße 27
D-80799 Munich
Phone: +49 (0)89 23805 216

Gallery hours:
Daily except Monday 10.00 – 18.00
Tuesday 10.00 – 20.00

Alte Pinakothek website

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Three Openings Wednesday 3rd March 2010

March 2010

Camilla Tadich: Slabalong and Mark Hislop: Drawing at Sophie Gannon Gallery; Simon Obarzanek at Karen Woodbury Gallery; Kent Wilson Higher Breeds and Alice Wormald Wayside and Hedgerow at Shifted

Camilla Tadich: Slabalong and Mark Hislop: Drawing at Sophie Gannon Gallery, 2 Albert Street, Richmond
March 2nd – March 27th 2010
Sophie Gannon Gallery website

Simon Obarzanek at Karen Woodbury Gallery, 4 Albert Street, Richmond
March 3rd – March 27th 2010
This gallery is now closed

Kent Wilson Higher Breeds and Alice Wormald Wayside and Hedgerow at Shifted, Level 1, 15 Albert Street, Richmond
This gallery is now closed

All photos by Marcus Bunyan

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening - Mark Hislop 'Drawing'

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening – Mark Hislop Drawing
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Camilla Tadich (Australian, b. 1982)
Bordertown
2010
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening – Camila Tadich Slabalong
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Karen Woodbury Gallery opening – Simon Obarzanek
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Simon’s photographs come from observing the physical movements of people pushing through the space around them in a city. He senses a universal language through movement and is drawn to this rather than their faces, as he normally is.

He noted that the “strained movements against gravity struck me with force… When I see a person creating a shape with their body in the street I do not sense the individual but a part, a piece of a larger performance. Each individual connects with others to create a visual language. I did not want faces to interrupt this larger work.”

Simon collects the movements on his camera, as photographic sketches, then he rephotographs the movement using friends and family as models. Removed from the busy streets, dislocated, his subject is isolated and framed against a dark background. Some twist away from the camera, or stagger against an unseen wind, sheltering their face from rain that is not falling. Simon does not show their faces, which emphasises the movement and makes the figures anonymous. These photographs are theatrical and mysterious, emphasising the loneliness and alienation that can be encountered living in a big city.

Text from the Turner Galleries website [Online] Cited 28/06/2019

Karen Woodbury Gallery – Simon Obarzanek opening, the artist standing centre in the grey t-shirt
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Simon Obarzanek (Israel, lives and works Melbourne, b. 1968)
Untitled movement No.2 No.7
2010
C-Type hand print
100 x 120cm
Photos: Marcus Bunyan