Review: ‘Safety Zone’ by John Young at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 15th April – 22nd May 2010

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) 'Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #2' 2010 from the exhibition 'Safety Zone' by John Young at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, April - May, 2010

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956)
Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #2
2010
Digital print and oil on Belgian linen
240 x 331cm
image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

 

 

What can one say about work that is so confronting, poignant and beautiful – except to say that it is almost unbearable to look at this work without being emotionally charged, to wonder at the vicissitudes of human life, of events beyond one’s control.

Simply, this is the best exhibition that I have seen in Melbourne so far this year.

The exhibition tells the story of the massacre of 300,000 people in the city of Nanjing in Jiangsu, China by Japanese troops in December, 1937 in what was to become known as the Nanjing Massacre. It also tells the story of a group of foreigners led by German businessman John Rabe and American missionary Minnie Vautrin who set up a “safety zone” to protect the lives of at least 250,000 Chinese citizens. The work is conceptually and aesthetically well resolved, the layering within the work creating a holistic narrative that engulfs and enfolds the viewer – holding them in the shock of brutality, the poignancy of poetry and the (non)sublimation of the human spirit to the will of others.

On the left wall of the gallery are three large mixed-media paintings of screen printed photographs of the Nanjing Flower Market taken the year before the massacre (see three images directly below). The printing of the press photographs at such a scale (a la Marco Fusinato) emphasises the dot structure of the photograph, the intensity of a newspaper reality ‘blown up’ to a huge scale. Unfortunately, you cannot see this deconstruction of the image very well in the examples below (clicking on the lower two images to get a larger version will give you a better idea), but believe me it most effective in creating a spatio-temporal distance between the viewer and the image. The dissolution of the image into dots is surmounted by painted cherry blossoms, bleached corals and piles of logs that overlay the photographic text. The reason-ances are sublime. The mind tries to process the distance between the death of the people and the photograph, the knowledge of what is about to happen to them, and the sensuality of the buds and flowers: new life!

To my friend and I the coral in the last painting reminded us both of the emanations of psychic phenomena at a seance, a series of radiations originating in the godhead.

On the right wall of the gallery is a grid of three rows of twenty images that make up the work Safety Zone (2010, see bottom image). Made up of chalk drawings on black paper (a la Rudolf Steiner), writings by the Europeans including Vautrin and Rabe, statistics, gruesome photographs of the massacre and observations by the artist, this is in part both a confronting and benevolent work.

Archival photographs are printed digitally (the dot structure working to less affect here); some vertical photographs are shown horizontally. Text written in chalk is erased with a sweep of the hand. Thoughts of the Buddha, the infinity symbol linked to the Buddha’s Ray and the Buddha’s Heart are a physical presence. Two blue chalk lines intersect and cross over, so poignant and sublime amongst the destruction that surrounds. Golf clubs, beer bottles, bayonets.

 

‘THERE IS NOTHING LEFT’ 13.12.37 (Robert Wilson)

‘HOME SICKNESS’

‘Simulacrum > Heart’

A simply drawn coffin shape on black ground

‘I began to roam around the city preventing further atrocities myself’

‘They will not do so, if it is in my power to prevent it’ (Minnie Vautrin)

UNSPEAKABLE ACTS OF EVIL … BECOMING BANAL

 

At both ends of the gallery is the last element in this play of hope, mutability and madness. Two large oil-on-linen paintings, titled The Crippled Tree #1 & #2 (see images below) “provide another register to the memory of the event. According to Young, the battered and split logs, painted in the negative, resonate and recollect the violence done to the victims of the massacre.” Unfortunately the two small images below cannot really give you an idea of the metaphorical power of these paintings. Like twisted and broken bodies larger than life size they become the glue that holds the other elements of the exhibition together. Without them there would be no transition from one side of the gallery, one element of the work to another. In their solarisation they emote an energy that flows down the length of the gallery = is this possible? Yes it is!

You feel the cracking of their branches, the amputation of their limbs but their spirit, their efflorescence (which, most appropriately considering the use of the Flower Market photographs, means “to flower out” in French) shines on. Such is the nature of the human spirit. Take the time and see this work. It is well worth the journey.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the artist, Serena Bentley and Anna Schwartz Gallery for allowing me to reproduce the images in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) 'Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #3' 2010 from the exhibition 'Safety Zone' by John Young at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, April - May, 2010

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956)
Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #3
2010
Digital print and oil on Belgian linen
240 x 331cm
image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) 'Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #1' 2010 from the exhibition 'Safety Zone' by John Young at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, April - May, 2010

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956)
Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #1
2010
digital print and oil on Belgian linen
240 x 331cm
image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

 

 

Safety Zone, John Young’s latest project presents a series of intricate paintings that reassemble historical reminiscences of human survival by linking experimental contemporary art with investigative visual reports, in historical photographs and documents.

This body of work draws attention to incidents across the city of Nanjing in Jiangsu, China, just moments before the onset of the Nanjing Massacre, which followed the capture of the city by Japanese Imperial Forces on 13 December 1937. In the six weeks following the invasion, a quarter of a million Chinese citizens were killed in what the American historian Iris Chang described as the ‘forgotten holocaust of World War II’.

Through Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking, the world was introduced to the personal memoirs of foreigners living in Nanjing who had been working on creating a ‘safety zone’ that would protect 250,000 Chinese citizens from the invading Japanese troops. Two of the twenty-one foreigners who stayed in the city to help set up the Nanjing Safety Zone were the American missionary Minnie Vautrin and the German businessman John Rabe. Their experiences have been noted by Young, who travelled to Nanjing, Berlin and Heidelberg, conducting first hand interviews and research for this compelling multi-layered project which exemplifies the transformative function of art.

The installation Safety Zone consists of three series of works which reference acts of resistance by individuals to protect fellow human beings against these atrocities that were underpinned by autocratic regimes and nationalist ideologies.

In the Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) series, carefully painted spring flowers and bleached corals are superimposed over historical photographs taken in Nanjing a year prior to the massacre. The meticulously rendered impressions of logs in The Crippled Tree #1 & #2 provide another register to the memory of the event. According to Young, the battered and split logs, painted in the negative, resonate and recollect the violence done to the victims of the massacre.

The carefully assembled bank of 60 chalk drawings and digital prints that make up the centerpiece of Safety Zone provides an intricate understanding of the humanity that lies beneath this tragic event through the revelation of extraordinary acts of self-sacrifice.

Dr Thomas J. Berghuis
Department of Art History and Film, The University of Sydney

Text from the Anna Schwartz Gallery website

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) 'The Crippled Tree #1' 2010

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956)
The Crippled Tree #1
2010
Oil on linen
274 x 183cm
image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) 'The Crippled Tree #2' 2010

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956)
The Crippled Tree #2
2010
Oil on linen
274 x 183cm
image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) 'Safety Zone' 2010 (installation view)

 

John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956)
Safety Zone (installation view)
2010
60 works, digital prints on photographic paper and chalk on blackboard-painted archival cotton paper
Image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

 

 

Anna Schwartz Gallery
185 Flinders Lane
Melbourne, Victoria 3000

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 12 – 5pm
Saturday 1 – 5pm

Anna Schwartz Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O’Sullivan’ at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Exhibition dates: 12th February – 9th May, 2010

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Sand Dunes, Carson Desert, Nevada' 1867 from the exhibition 'Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan' at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., February - May, 2010

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Sand Dunes, Carson Desert, Nevada
1867
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

The photograph shows O’Sullivan’s photographic wagon in which he developed his glass plates.

 

 

O’Sullivan died at the age of forty two but what photographs he left us!
The human scales the sublime, literally; figures in the descriptive landscape.
The last photograph is, if you will forgive the colloquialism, a doozy.

Marcus


“If the world is unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest it is not surprising things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming, but it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time with them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.”

Alain de Botton. The Art of Travel. London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 178-179.


Many thankx to Laura Baptiste and the Smithsonian American Art Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Lake in Conejos Cañon, Colorado' 1874 from the exhibition 'Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan' at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., February - May, 2010

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Lake in Conejos Cañon, Colorado
1874
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Black Cañon, Colorado River, From Camp 8, Looking Above' 1871 from the exhibition 'Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan' at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., February - May, 2010

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Black Cañon, Colorado River, From Camp 8, Looking Above
1871
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Buttes near Green River City, Wyoming' 1872

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Buttes near Green River City, Wyoming
1872
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Cañon de Chelle, Walls of the Grand Canon about 1200 feet in height' 1873

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Cañon de Chelle, Walls of the Grand Canon about 1200 feet in height
1873
Albumen print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

 

 

Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O’Sullivan is the first major exhibition devoted to this remarkable photographer in three decades. The exhibition is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., from Feb. 12 through May 9. The museum is the only venue for the exhibition.

Marcus


“Framing the West” – a collaboration between the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Library of Congress – offers a critical reevaluation of O’Sullivan’s images and the conditions under which they were made, as well as an examination of their continued importance in the photographic canon. It features more than 120 photographs and stereo cards by O’Sullivan, including a notable group of King Survey photographs from the Library of Congress that have rarely been on public display since 1876. The installation also includes images and observations by six contemporary landscape photographers that comment on the continuing influence of O’Sullivan’s photographs. Toby Jurovics, curator of photography, is the exhibition curator.

“Timothy H. O’Sullivan is widely recognised as an influential figure in the development of photography in America, so I am delighted that we have partnered with our colleagues at the Library of Congress to present this new assessment of his work and to expose a new generation to his forceful images,” said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

“In the years following the Civil War, the West was fertile ground for American photographers, but Timothy H. O’Sullivan has always stood apart in his powerful and direct engagement with the landscape,” said Jurovics. “Almost a century and a half after their making, his photographs still speak with an unparalleled presence and immediacy.”

O’Sullivan was part of a group of critically acclaimed 19th-century photographers – including A.J. Russell, J.K. Hillers and William Bell – who went west in the 1860s and 1870s. O’Sullivan was a photographer for two of the most ambitious geographical surveys of the 19th century. He accompanied geologist Clarence King on the Geologic and Geographic Survey of the Fortieth Parallel and Lt. George M. Wheeler on the Geographical and Geological Surveys West of the 100th Meridian. During his seven seasons (1867-1874) traversing the mountain and desert regions of the Western United States, he created one of the most influential visual accounts of the American interior.

His assignments with the King and Wheeler surveys gave O’Sullivan the freedom to record the Western landscape with a visual and emotional complexity that was without precedent. His photographs illustrated geologic theories and provided information useful to those settling in the West, but they also were a personal record of his encounter with a landscape that was challenging and inspiring.

Of all his colleagues, O’Sullivan has maintained the strongest influence on contemporary practice. The formal directness and lack of picturesque elements in his work appealed to a later generation of photographers who, beginning in the 1970s, turned away from a romanticised view of nature to once again embrace a clear, unsentimental approach to the landscape. Observations about his images by Thomas Joshua Cooper, Eric Paddock, Edward Ranney, Mark Ruwedel, Martin Stupich and Terry Toedtemeier appear in the exhibition and the catalog.

O’Sullivan (1840-1882) was born in Ireland. He emigrated to the United States with his family at the age of two, eventually settling in Staten Island, N.Y. Biographical details about O’Sullivan are spare, yet he is thought to have had his earliest photographic training in the New York studio of portrait photographer Mathew Brady. He is believed to have accompanied Alexander Gardner to Washington, D.C., to assist in opening a branch of the Brady studio in 1858, and when Gardner opened his own studio in Washington in 1863, O’Sullivan followed. O’Sullivan first gained recognition for images made during the Civil War, particularly those from the Battle of Gettysburg, and 41 of his images were published in Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War. O’Sullivan’s experience photographing in the field helped earn him the position as photographer for King’s survey. After his survey work, he held brief assignments in Washington with the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Treasury. O’Sullivan died of tuberculosis on Staten Island at the age of 42.

Press release from the Smithsonian American Art Museum website [Online] Cited 25/04/2010 no longer available online

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Green River Cañon, Colorado' 1872

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Green River Cañon, Colorado
1872
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Horse Shoe Cañon, Green River, Wyoming' 1872

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Horse Shoe Cañon, Green River, Wyoming
1872
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Summit of Wahsatch Range, Utah (Lone Peak)' 1869

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Summit of Wahsatch Range, Utah (Lone Peak)
1869
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho, View Across Top of Falls' 1874

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho, View Across Top of Falls
1874
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

 

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840-1882) 'The Pyramid & Domes, Pyramid Lake, Nevada' 1867

 

Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, 1840-1882)
The Pyramid & Domes, Pyramid Lake, Nevada
1867
Albumen print
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

 

 

Smithsonian American Art Museum
8th and F Streets, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004

Opening hours:
11.30am – 7.00pm daily

Smithsonian American Art Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Nude Visions. 150 Years of Nude Photography’ at Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe (MKG), Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 29th January – 25th April, 2010

 Curator: Ulrich Pohlmann

 

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

Marcus

 

 

Kusakabe Kimbei (Japanese, 1841-1934)
Sumo wrestlers
c. 1880

 

Gerhard Riebicke (German, 1878-1957) 'Couple Performing German Dance' c. 1930 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Nude Visions. 150 Years of Nude Photography' at Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe (MKG), Hamburg, January - April, 2010

 

Gerhard Riebicke (German, 1878-1957)
Couple Performing German Dance
c. 1930
Gelatin silver print
11.6 x 16.2 cm
Bodo Niemann and Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Gerhard Riebicke spent his childhood in Switzerland. He studied in Tübingen, worked as a tutor in Poznan, and appropriated the technique of self taught photographer. In 1909 he was a press photographer in Berlin. Gradually, his focus shifted to the sports and nudity culture photography (ball games, jumps, dance or bathing scenes).

As a friend of Adolf Koch, he documented his school for physical education and nude culture. As a chronicler of the reform movement, he also maintained contacts with the Laban School of Hertha Feist and other dance and gymnastics schools Hedwig Hagemann, Berte Trümpi and Mary Wigman. He was represented in Hans Surén’s “The Man and the Sun” in 1924. After 1933 he concentrated on sports photography.

Text translated from the German Wikipedia website

 

T.W. Salomon (attributed) 'Female Nude in Armchair' c. 1935

 

T.W. Salomon (attributed)
Female Nude in Armchair
c. 1935
Gelatin silver print
27.5 x 27.4cm
Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

T.W. Salomon was a notable German photographer best known for his “Revuegirls” series from 1935. He was a contemporary of Erich Salomon, another influential German photographer, but there is no direct connection between the two.

 

T.W. Salomon (attributed) 'Revuegirls' 1935

 

T.W. Salomon (attributed)
Revuegirls
1935
Gelatin silver print
© Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Jan Mutsu. 'Japanese Man with Tattoo' c. 1955 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Nude Visions. 150 Years of Nude Photography' at Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe (MKG), Hamburg, January - April, 2010

 

Jan Mutsu
Japanese Man with Tattoo
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
20.2 x 25.7cm
Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Josef Breitenbach (German-American, 1896-1984) 'Nude' from the series 'This beautiful landscape' 1963 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Nude Visions. 150 Years of Nude Photography' at Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe (MKG), Hamburg, January - April, 2010

 

Josef Breitenbach (German-American, 1896-1984)
Nude from the series This beautiful landscape
1963
Gelatin silver print
27.5 x 35.3cm
Breitenbach Trust USA and Munchner Stadtmuseum

 

 

An exhibition with more than 250 original photos, books and folders with studies from the nude, including masterpieces from each period.

The representation of the unclothed human body has exuded a great fascination ever since time began. The exhibition Nude Visions invites visitors to embark on a journey through a collection of depictions of the human body spanning 150 years. More than 250 original photos, books and folders with studies from the nude will be on view, including masterpieces from each period: from photographs dating from the 19th century which seek their models in Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance, up to Surrealistic experiments and fashion and lifestyle photography. The exhibition illustrates changing ideals of beauty and moral perceptions, and reveals once again the constant attempt to balance between educational openness, titillation and curiosity.

“Without any doubt, there is nothing which draws the attention of the observer to it so much as the naked human body.” This comment of the journalist and photographer Kurt Freytag in1909 is as true today as it was then. The exhibition turns this fact to its advantage and deals with the historical, aesthetic and ideological development of images of the human body in photography. The show is divided into seven chapters devoted to the meaning and function of the unclothed human body in photography, and tracing the history of the medium: “Academies and Exotic Pictures in the 19th century,” “Art photography around 1900 (Pictorialism),” “Avant-gardes of the 20s and 30s,” “Artistic positions after 1945,” “Naturism,” “The Male Nude” and “Glamourous Nudes.” The first coloured Daguerreotypes of curvaceous ladies with blushing cheeks dating from 1855 meet the unflatteringly in-your-face and voyeuristic self-portrait of the photographer Frank Stürmer from 2004. These two photos mark the two ends of the spectrum covered by the exhibition, which illustrates the evolution of nude photography over sixteen decades by the example of more than 250 eminent works.

Nude photography is always, too, a process of negotiation between revealing and concealing. This exhibition makes clear the ambivalence of what is visible and what is unseen, of shame and curiosity, of legitimation and provocativeness. How nakedness is treated is closely bound up with the specific social context in which it occurs, the ideas of morality and the aesthetic ideal of an era. The motif of the nude is always influenced here both by the historical artistic tradition and reactions to contemporary impulses, which are interpreted by the photographer. Thus the movement for women’s emancipation, for instance, led to new ways of looking at both the female and the male body, as seen for example in the work of Herlinde Koelbl. Images which were still regarded as being scandalous at the beginning of the 20th century, triggering moral misgivings and controversy about a subject perceived as being delicate, would hardly bring a blush to the face of anyone living today. It is not only the motifs which have moved on, but also the reproducibility of the images and the extent of their media coverage impact on the awareness and significance of nakedness in society.

The origins of the history of nude photography lie in the so-called “academies,” which provided painters, graphic artists and sculptors with study objects in the 19th century and which followed the historical artistic models of Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance. Nude photography soon increasingly became emancipated from being a mere model for painting and sculpture, and developed artistic ambitions of its own: photographers discovered in the art of the fin de siècle, with its debt to Symbolism, the nude as a reflection of emotional states and yearnings. In the outgoing 19th century, with its bias towards the exact sciences, the human body served as an object for the study of movement, such as in the celebrated series shots by Eadweard Muybridge showing the sequence of motions in human movement.

Whereas historically staged scenes and compositions are still created in the sheltered environment of the atelier at the beginnings of photography, we find the first open-air nudes after 1870. Wilhelm von Gloeden, Guglielmo Plüschow and others took advantage of the light in the Mediterranean South to stage their visions of an earthly Arcadia. As a feature of the Lebensreform back-to-nature movement which gained ground from the turn of the century onwards, especially in Germany, nude photography became a torchbearer of the Naturist movement. The ornamentally arranged groupings of naked dancers which Gerhard Riebicke for example photographs, mainly in the German countryside, became a symbol for the liberation from the moral constraints of civilisation and industrialisation. The aesthetic of athletic bodies engaged in sporting activities or dancers in motion was taken up in the heroic physical ideal of the National Socialists and can later still be found in the cult of bodybuilding.

A new, more radical vision was developed by the Avant-garde movements after the 1920s, with their abstract and surrealistic experiments, such as the stories narrated in a play of light and shadow by FrantiÅ¡ek Drtikol or the deformed bodies in the works of Hans List. The theme of “glamour” plays a crucial role above all in fashion photography. That chapter poses the question as to what role is played in the debate on fashion by the way of showing the unclothed female body, by male desire and how perceptions change in the course of cultural history. Glamour can be seen in the erotic images from the Atelier Manassé, shown in soft focus, in Bert Stern’s portraits from the “last sitting” of Marilyn Monroe, up to and including Helmut Newton’s photos. In addition to these, selected works by amateurs as well as the male nude as an expression of gay emancipation will also be presented in pictures, particularly by Will McBride or Herbert Roettgen, who placed the representation of the naked male body in the focus of their work as an expression of their homosexuality, an emblem of their coming-out.

The depiction of the naked torso is shrouded in an aura of scandal and has always been a political bone of contention, whereby images of the bare human body send signals which differ according to their historical context: the photographic artists of the 1970s, working within the framework of body art and performance events, declared the directness of their own physical experience to be a political necessity. In retrospect, their work can be seen as a last desperate attempt to grapple with the vanishing concept of the subjective personality before the transition to the post-modern age. The private spaces of life too are meanwhile also illuminated in a quite different way than 25 years ago. The photographer Thomas Ruff deals in his works, which he imbues with a diffuse haziness by digital means, with the theme of the exhibitionism which can go as far as pornographic exposure of one’s own and others’ nakedness in internet forums. Nude Visions shows that the representation of the naked human body always also has something to do with the quest for insight into what human beings (and one’s own self) really are and what role they play in society.

Press release from the MKG website [Online] Cited 15/04/2010. No longer available online

 

Franz Hanfstaengl (Bavarian, 1804-1877) 'Eugenie von Klenze' about 1855

 

Franz Hanfstaengl (Bavarian, 1804-1877)
Eugenie von Klenze
about 1855
© Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Lehnert & Landrock. 'Artistic Nude Study 3113' around 1920

 

Lehnert & Landrock
Rudolf Lehnert (Bohemia, 1878-1948) & Ernst Landrock (German, 1878-1948)
Artistic Nude Study 3113
around 1920
© Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Lehnert & Landrock was a photographic studio run by Rudolf Franz Lehnert and Ernst Heinrich Landrock active in Tunisia and Egypt in the early 20th century, noted for producing Orientalist images. Rudolf Franz Lehnert and Ernst Heinrich Landrock produced images of North African people, landscapes, and architecture for a primarily European audience. These images were mainly distributed in monographs, though also as original prints, photogravures, and lithographic postcards.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Rudolf Koppitz (Austrian, 1994-1936)
'In the Arms of Nature (Self-portrait)'
around 1925

 

Rudolf Koppitz (Austrian, 1994-1936)
In the Arms of Nature (Self-portrait)
around 1925
Gelatin silver print
© Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Anonymous photographer. 'Untitled' c. 1928

 

Anonymous photographer
Untitled
c. 1928
© Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Around 1900, photography increasingly established itself as an artistic medium, with proponents like Frank Eugene attempting to conceal its true character through soft-focus lenses, gauze curtains, and post-processing of the image.

 

Herbert List (German, 1903-1975) 'Arab Boy with Desert Candles' 1935

 

Herbert List (German, 1903-1975)
Arab Boy with Desert Candles
1935
Gelatin silver print
29.7 x 22.5cm
Herbert List-inheritance, Hamburg and Munchner Stadtmuseum

 

Will McBride (American, 1931-2015)
'Barbara in our bed, recording for 'twen'' 1959

 

Will McBride (American, 1931-2015)
Barbara in our bed, recording for ‘twen’
1959
Gelatin silver print
© Will McBride and Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Bert Stern (American, 1929-2013) 'Marilyn Monroe' from the series 'The Last Sitting' 1962

 

Bert Stern (American, 1929-2013)
Marilyn Monroe from the series The Last Sitting
1962
C-print
48 x 48.1cm
Bert Stern

 

André Gelpke (German, b. 1947) 'Angelique, Salambo, St.Pauli/Hamburg' 1976

 

André Gelpke (German, b. 1947)
Angelique, Salambo, St.Pauli/Hamburg
1976
Gelatin silver print
32.6 x 22cm
André Gelpke and Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Anonymous photographer. 'Female Nude Watching Television' 1980s

 

Anonymous photographer
Female Nude Watching Television
1980s
© Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Hermann Stamm (German, b. 1953)
'Homage to Helmut Newton' 1985

 

Hermann Stamm (German, b. 1953)
Homage to Helmut Newton
1985
Gelatin silver print
© Hermann Stamm and Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Norbert Przybilla (1953-1996) 'Franz' 1986

 

Norbert Przybilla (1953-1996)
Franz
1986
Gelatin silver print
50 x 50 cm
Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Ulrike Frömel (German) 'Body image'
1993

 

Ulrike Frömel (German)
Body image
1993
Gelatin silver print
© Ulrike Frömel and Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

Juergen Teller (German, b. 1964) 'Kristen McMenamy' 1996

 

Juergen Teller (German, b. 1964)
Kristen McMenamy
1996
© Juergen Teller and Münchner Stadtmuseum

 

 

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
Steintorplatz | 20099 Hamburg

Opening hours:
Tuesdays to Sundays 10 am – 6 pm
Wednesdays and Thursdays 10 am – 9 pm
Closed on Mondays

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg 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. 'Tangent Bundle' 2009

 

Pamela Rataj (Australian)
Tangent Bundle
2009

 

Pamela Rataj. 'Ravel' 2009

 

Pamela Rataj (Australian)
Ravel
2009

 

Pamela Rataj. 'Kairos' 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 1
2009

 

Pamela Rataj. 'Faisceaux 4' 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

 

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

 

Claudia Damichi (Australian, b. 1972) 'Star Gazer' 2009

 

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

 

Claudia Damichi (Australian, b. 1972) 'Gridlock' 2010

 

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

 

Claudia Damichi (Australian, b. 1972) 'Reading between the lines' 2010

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942) 'Signal Driver' 2010

 

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

 

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

 

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942) 'Body Type 3' 2010

 

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

 

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942) 'Things we leave behind' 2009

 

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

 

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

 

Robert Boynes (Australian, b. 1942) 'Postscript' 2009

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Sibylle Bergemann (German, 1941-2010) 'Alexanderplatz, Berlin' 1967

 

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

 

Sibylle Bergemann (German, 1941-2010) 'Schöneweide, Berlin' 1972

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Gundula Schulze Eldowy (German, b. 1954) 'Berlin' 1989

 

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

 

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: ‘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

 

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening - Mark Hislop 'Drawing'

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening - Mark Hislop 'Drawing'

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening - Mark Hislop 'Drawing'

 

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

 

Camilla Tadich (Australian, b. 1982) 'Bordertown' 2010

 

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

 

Sophie Gannon Gallery opening - Camila Tadich 'Slabalong'

 

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

 

Karen Woodbury Gallery opening – Simon Obarzanek

 

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

 

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

 

Karen Woodbury Gallery - Simon Obarzanek opening

Simon Obarzanek (Israel, lives and works Melbourne, b. 1968) 'Untitled movement No.2 No.7' 2010

 

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

 

Shifted opening - Kent Wilson 'Higher Breeds'

Shifted opening - Kent Wilson 'Higher Breeds'

 

Shifted opening – Kent Wilson Higher Breeds
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Kent Wilson (Australian) Image from the 'HoneySucker' series 2009  (detail)

 

Kent Wilson (Australian)
Image from the HoneySucker series (detail)
2009
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Shifted opening - Alice Wormald 'Wayside & Hedgerow'

Shifted opening - Alice Wormald 'Wayside & Hedgerow'

 

Shifted opening – Alice Wormald Wayside & Hedgerow
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Hawaii’ by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York

Exhibition dates: 13th February – 13th March, 2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Nikko Toshogu' 1977 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Hawaii' by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York, February - March, 2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Nikko Toshogu
1977
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Quilt' 1977 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Hawaii' by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York, February - March, 2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Quilt
1977
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hokkaido' 1978 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Hawaii' by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York, February - March, 2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hokkaido
1978
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Tono' 1974

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Tono
1974
Gelatin silver print

 

 

Luhring Augustine is pleased to present its first exhibition featuring the work of Daido Moriyama, one of Japan’s leading figures in photography. Witness to the spectacular changes that transformed postwar Japan, his photographs express a fascination with the cultural contradictions of age-old traditions that persist within modern society. Providing a harsh, crude vision of city life and the chaos of everyday existence, strange worlds, and unusual characters, his work occupies the space between the objective and the subjective, the illusory and the real.

Moriyama takes pictures with a small hand-held camera that enables him to shoot freely while walking or running or through the windows of moving cars. Taken from vertiginous angles or overwhelmed by closeups, his blurred images are charged with a palpable and frenetic energy that reveal a unique proximity to his subject matter. Snapshots of stray dogs, posters, mannequins in shop windows, and shadows cast into alleys present the beauty and sometimes-terrifying reality of a marginalised landscape. His anonymous and detached approach enables him to capture the “visible present” made up of accidental and uncanny discoveries as he experiences them.

Moriyama emerged as a photographer in the 1960’s at the tail end of the VIVO collective, a revolutionary and highly influential group of Japanese artists who reexamined the conventions of photography during the tumultuous postwar period. William Klein’s loose, Beat style images of New York City in the 1960s also served as a major turning point for Moriyama, who found inspiration in Klein’s free-form photographic style. Taken by these innovative approaches at home and abroad, Moriyama ultimately went on to forge his own radical style.

Hawaii, Moriyama’s most recent body of work, was produced over a period of three years and presents his distinct perspective on the daily lives of the people living on the islands of Hawaii and Oahu. Returning to the island five times before feeling prepared to shoot these surroundings, Moriyama’s overall approach is purposeful and considered despite his loose and informal style. The series was recently exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and published in a volume by the institution.

Daido Moriyama was born in Osaka in 1938. He has had museum shows around the world including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. His work is part of many major public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Getty in Los Angeles.

Press release from the Luhring Augustine website [Online] Cited 24/02/2010 no longer available online

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Hawaii' by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York, February - March, 2010
Installation view of the exhibition 'Hawaii' by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York, February - March, 2010
Installation view of the exhibition 'Hawaii' by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York, February - March, 2010
Installation view of the exhibition 'Hawaii' by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York, February - March, 2010

 

Installation views of the exhibition Hawaii by Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augustine, New York, February – March, 2010

 

 

A total of 52 black and white photographs, hung in the entry, main gallery, and one of the back rooms. 29 of the images are from the recent Hawaii series, taken / printed between 2007 and 2010…

What if Sander had taken portraits in India or China? (Another recent example of this phenomenon would be Eggleston’s images of Paris, here.) The effect is somewhat like musicians making covers, taking someone else’s songs and making them their own; sometimes the mashup creates something wholly original and unexpected, and sometimes the combination doesn’t quite work.

This exhibit extends this line of thinking, with the Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama making pictures of Hawaii, using a group of the artist’s vintage images of Japan as a counterweight for comparison. The older works provide a reminder of Moriyama’s powerful visual vocabulary: dark shadowy images, with skewed off-kilter angles, harsh contrasts, and a rawness that often mixes the gloomy and the menacing. His best images uncover the dark underbelly of the streets, capturing the cultural nuances of Japan in gritty, grainy blackness. 

The island life of Hawaii, with its shakas and mellow aloha spirit, presents a surprising challenge for Moriyama: where can a visitor find the brooding or sinister in this paradise? Moriyama does his best to apply his trademark darkness to palm trees and ferns, beaches and hotels, jungles and clouded hills, tourist shops and conch shells, but the overall effect lacks the malignant edginess that haunts his images of Tokyo; he has found some unexpected surface oddities, but the subjects feel a bit too obvious and superficial. Visually, the big prints (roughly 3 by 5 feet) and their shadowy palette make for a jarring view of the easy going, sunny destination, but the subject matter just doesn’t lend itself all that well to deep psychological probing. The real culture of Hawaii is hidden somewhere else, far from the welcoming hula girls, tiki fabrics, and flowers offered to visitors.

Loring Knoblauch. “Daido Moriyama, Hawaii @Luhring Augustine,” on the Collector Daily website, March 4, 2010 [Online] Cited 28/04/2025

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007-2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007-2010
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007-2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007-2010
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007-2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007-2010
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007-2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007-2010
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007-2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007
Gelatin silver print

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Hawaii' 2007-2010

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Hawaii
2007
Gelatin silver print

 

 

Luhring Augustine Gallery
531 West 24th Street, New York
Phone: 1-212-206-9100

Opening hours:
Summer hours (June 20 – September 2):
Monday – Friday, 10am – 5.30pm
Winter hours
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm

Luhring Augustine Gallery website

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Review: ‘Jenny Holzer’ at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 17th December, 2009 – 28th February, 2010

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950) 'Projections' various dates from the exhibition 'Jenny Holzer' at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, December 2009 - February 2010

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950) 'Projections' various dates

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950) 'Projections' various dates

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
Projections
Various dates
With poetry by Wislawa Szymborska

 

 

“I draw from everything – from the National Security Archives collection to old material from the FBI’s website to postings by the ACLU. I concentrate on the content. It tends to be very rough material about what’s happened to soldiers in the field, about the good and bad choices they’ve been forced to make, and what has happened to detainees and civilians. I also go to material that’s almost completely gone, either whited out or blacked out, because that represents the issue. You don’t have to spill words when the page is completely black.”


Jenny Holzer

 

 

This is a patchy but ultimately redemptive exhibition by Jenny Holzer at the Australia Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne. The main exhibition space at ACCA is filled with one installation created specifically for the space titled For ACCA (2009) that in essence is the same as the installation for The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MOCA)(see photographs above).

The work is projected by a Cameleon Teleprojecteur into the large space and features poems by Wislawa Szymborska with titles such as “The End and the Beginning”, “The Joy of Writing”, “Children of Our Age” and “The Terrorist, He’s Watching” scrolling a la Star Wars opening credits from the bottom upwards into the darkened space. The words that flow into the mis en scene are distorted at the edges like a fish eye lens distorts reality. EVERYTHING IS IN CAPITAL LETTERS TO EMPHASISE THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WORDS, JUST IN CASE WE MISSED THE POINT. It feels like you have been metaphorically hit over the head with the artist’s concern and frankly, I soon lost interest in the mobilisation of meaning:

“I don’t require changes
from the surf,
now diligent, now sluggish,
obeying not me.”

“The Bomb in the bar
will explode at thirteen twenty
Now it’s just thirteen sixteen
There’s still time
for some to go in,
and some to come out.”

“There’s one thing
I won’t agree to:
My own return.
The privilege of presence –
I give it up.”

“I survived you by enough,
and only by enough,
to contemplate from afar – “

“After Every War
Someone has to tidy up.
Things won’t pick
themselves up, after all.”

 
More interesting are the 4 bean bags placed on the floor that are covered in matt grey heat sensitive fabric. As you sit in the bags your indentation heats up the fabric. Upon standing the mark of your body, your body temperature, forms silver Yves Klein-like paintings of glowing phosphorescence. Looking back into the projector from your recumbent position you get an eerie view of the words coming towards you on the floor and going away on the ceiling, your body illuminated in words. What spoils the installation for me is the didactic nature of the protestations, their proselytising soon wearing thin on a body more attuned to the pithy, insightful phrases of Barbara Kruger.

The electronic sculpture Torso (see image below) “emphatically addresses the private body enmeshed and lost in information and government operations.” (catalogue text). Featuring 10 doubled LED projectors programmed with case files of American soldiers accused of war crimes in the Middle East, abuse questions of detainees, ‘For Official Use Only’ texts and personal messages of love the sculpture is at first seen from a distance, framed by two rectangular doorways of the previous galleries. The mainly blue background and pink lettered light emanating from the sculpture is beautiful and quite magical and as one enters the empty space of the gallery the light focuses the eyes on the moving words, their repetition, their flashing, their running at different speeds and colours, all with the same message – words that seem to appear out of the wall and disappear back into it. The effect soon wears thin however; when you delve into the guts of the torso fascination begins to wane and you are left with repetition for repetition’s sake and with ‘pretty’ words that are just that: patterns of perniciousness displayed for our pleasure.

The reason that you must visit this exhibition is the last body of work. Working with declassified documents that relate to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Holzer’s Redaction paintings address the elemental force that is man’s (in)humanity to man (in the study of literature, redaction is a form of editing in which multiple source texts are combined (redacted) and subjected to minor alteration to make them into a single work).1 Silkscreen printed as oil on canvas these paintings are some of the most poignant, moving, terrifying, enraging pieces of art that I have seen in a long time. I was moved to tears. They are tough works and they deserve to be.

Autopsy reports, a “Wish List” for alternative interrogation techniques (Wish List/Gloves Off 2007), a handwritten letter from an Iraq student detailing his experience of torture (By the Name of God 2006) and palm prints – (some totally illegible as the censor eradicates human identity, erases with a double violence – to the person themselves, to the validation that they existed) – document a government’s malfeasance.

What a word malfeasance!
Etymology: mal- + obsolete feasance doing, execution …

In these paintings the artist pulls back and lets the work speak for itself – and it is all the more powerful because of this. Using the physical process of the hand in the making of these images implicates every one of us in the complicities of the faceless bureaucrats and military personnel that hide behind blacked out names. The most moving of the hand prints are the partial prints taken after death where some ‘body’ has pressed down the deceased detainees hand to make an impression, mapping an identity already deleted (Faint Hand 2007 – unfortunately I don’t have any images of these paintings to show you). One is even presented as it was taken, upside down (Right Hand Down 2007). These are indescribable images, they tear you up inside.

I left the exhibition feeling shell-shocked after experiencing intimacy with an evil that leaves few traces. In the consciences of the perpetrators? In the hearts of the living! Oh, how I wish to see the day when the human race will truly evolve beyond. We live in hope and the work of Jenny Holzer reminds us to be vigilant, to speak out, to have courage in the face of the unconscionable.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Australia Centre for Contemporary Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

“Date of birth; 1947
Date/time of Death: 26 Nov 2003
Circumstances of Death: This Iraq  _____  died in U.S. custody”

“We are American soldiers, heirs to a long tradition of staying on the high ground. We need to stay there.”

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950) 'Torso' 2007 from the exhibition 'Jenny Holzer' at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, December 2009 - February 2010

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
Torso
2007
LED projectors

 

 

Holzer became well-known in the 1980s for her text-based works and public art. Her first series, Truisms (1977-1979), contains concise, aphoristic statements that reveal and question truths, beliefs, and ideologies. While Truisms first appeared on posters placed in the urban environment, Holzer’s texts later took a number of forms including light projections on high-profile public buildings, LED (light emitting diode) signs, stickers placed on surfaces such as parking metres and telephone booths, and public furniture such as marble and granite benches. While Holzer still at times relies on the thirteen texts she wrote from 1977-2001, her recent practice has turned to incorporating the writings of others, including works by internationally celebrated poets and declassified government documents. Like her own texts, the borrowed writings and documents address personal and public calamities in a range of voices and tones that approximates the complexity of daily life.

Though Holzer has used words and ideas in public spaces for the past thirty years, she has also created large-scale projects for prominent institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), and the Centre Pompidou (Paris).

For ACCA’s main exhibition hall, Holzer will project poetry in the form of light onto the floors, ceilings, and walls, making the language something felt as well as read. In addition, she will display works from a series that began in 2005 where she translates declassified government documents into paintings. The documents are left exactly as they were found when rendered through silkscreen onto oil-painted grounds. The marks of a censor are seen in the text blocked out by a black scribble or box. These works come, as Holzer has said, from her “frantic worrying about the war and attendant changes in American society.” The projections and paintings will be supplemented by an LED installation titled Torso. In this work, Holzer stacks ten semi-circular signs that display in red, blue, white, and purple light the statements, investigation reports, and emails from case files of soldiers accused of various crimes in the Middle East. Providing these voices, part damning, contradictory, sympathetic, anecdotal, and evidentiary, Holzer layers accounts of abuse and blame.

“Jenny Holzer’s words ask us to consider our thoughts and actions in the world. This essentially humanist and philosophical project encourages us to seek self enlightenment through examining our prejudices, false beliefs, fall back positions, and habits, to reach a new level of tolerance, understanding and self awareness”

Juliana Engberg, ACCA’s Artistic Director

Text from the ACCA website [Online] Cited 01/06/2010. No longer available online

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
'Left Hand (Palm Rolled)' 2007

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
Left Hand (Palm Rolled)
2007
Oil on linen
80 x 62 in. (203.2 x 157.5cm)
Text: U.S. government document

 

What truly adds substance to the style are the Redaction Paintings. These blown-up pieces of censored materials, silk-screened on to stretched canvas, afford an unnerving glimpse at how we fight wars. Authored by countless bureaucratic functionaries, they feel both predictable and eye-opening.

All of the embedded journalists in the world couldn’t produce as clear a picture as the government did in documenting its own malfeasance. Many of these documents feature the blurred type of countless reproductions, a sign that time is burying these paperwork tragedies until they become illegible and unactionable.

Holzer didn’t have to doctor these documents for heightened effect; the black bars that enshroud the names of victims and their tormentors speak for themselves. One autopsy report describes the fatal suffocation of a prisoner of war forced to maintain a stress position. In some cases nearly whole documents are ominously blacked out, like a national Rorschach test.2

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950) 'DODDOACID 008769' 2007 from the exhibition 'Jenny Holzer' at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, December 2009 - February 2010

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
DODDOACID 008769
2007
Oil on linen

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
'Right Hand (Palm Rolled)' 2007

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
Right Hand (Palm Rolled)
2007
Oil on linen
80 x 62 in. (203.2 x 157.5cm)
Text: U.S. government document

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
'Wish List/Gloves Off' 2006

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
Wish List/Gloves Off
2006
Oil on linen

 

“WISH LIST” document:

A captain in the US Army human intelligence division requested a “wish list” from subordinate interrogation teams for, “innovative interrogation techniques that will prove more successful than current methods.” One person interpreted this request to mean, “the captain wanted suggestions legal, illegal and somewhere in between.” The WISH LIST document is a summary of alternative interrogation techniques that the 4th Infantry Division, ICE, devised, including phone book strikes, low voltage electrocution and muscle fatigue inducement.

The document can no longer be found on the American Civil Liberties Union website. The “WISH LIST” is on p. 59.”3

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950) 'Right Hand DOD-044403' 2007

 

Jenny Holzer (American, b. 1950)
Right Hand DOD-044403
2007
Oil on linen

 

Footnotes

1/ Definition of redaction on Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 6 February 2010

2/ Arizona, Daniel. “Jenny Holzer and the Influence of Anxiety,” on More Intelligent Life.com website [Online] Cited January 2010. No longer available online

3/ Anon. “Jenny Holzer Projections.” on the MASS MOCA website [Online] Cited 17 January 2010. No longer available online

 

 

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)
111 Sturt Street
Southbank
Victoria 3006
Australia

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Friday 10am – 5pm
Weekends and Public Holidays 11am – 5pm
Closed Monday
Open all public holidays except Christmas Day and Good Friday

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art website

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