Ridiculous amounts of new projects and exhibitions opening up this week, so much that I'm gonna break this down into two separate posts (see part 2 tomorrow).
Start first at the Art Institute of Chicago with the premiere tonite of Harlem, U.S.A., a group of 25 vintage b/w prints by Dawoud Bey.
Bey, a professor of art at Columbia College Chicago, was raised in Queens but has deep family roots in Harlem. His studied documentation of the neighborhood reveals the intricacies of one of the most diverse neighborhoods in one of the most diverse cities in the world. He has discussed wanting to show all the various "types" of Harlem residents: the barber, the church ladies, the youth, etc. His dignified portraits accomplish this with a certain street photography ethos -- much distinguished from his contemporary works, which are more known for being large-scale color portraits made in controlled environments with more formal sittings.
Harlem, U.S.A.
photographs by Dawoud Bey
2 May - 9 September 2012
Art Institute of Chicago
111 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago
Continuing in Chicago, Matthew Avignone has a solo show of his project Stranger Than Family, opening on Thursday nite at David Weinberg Gallery. The series is Avignone's documentation of his own family, as he and all his siblings -- some with life-inhibiting special needs -- have been adopted from overseas (Matthew being the oldest child).
Stranger Than Family
photographs by Matthew Avignone
opening Thursday 3 May, 5-8pm
David Weinberg Gallery
300 W. Superior St., ste. 203, Chicago
Also on Thursday nite in Chicago, Kunz Vis Projects opens the group show Greyscale / Grayscale, featuring work by Jasmine Al-Masri, Linda Benjamin, RyKeyn Bailey, Sara Dauer, Ben Giska, Dusty James, Monique Roquet and Rachel West.
The artists here work across a variety of media from painting, collage, sculpture, photographs, and more, mainly pulling from individual experience (either strictly personal or anecdotal) but arriving as a collaborative body with compositions using found materials, collected objects, and other sources from the world around them, all layered atop eachother.
Greyscale / Grayscale
works by Jasmine Al-Masri, Linda Benjamin, RyKeyn Bailey, Sara Dauer, Ben Giska, Dusty James, Monique Roquet and Rachel West
opening Thursday 3 May, 5-7pm
Kunz Vis Projects (enter thru back alley)
2324 W. Montana St., Chicago
Among a slew of shows on the West Coast on Thursday, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco opens Mannequin, a series of brand new photographs by Lee Friedlander.
Mannequin
photographs by Lee Friedlander
3 May - 23 June 2012
Fraenkel Gallery
49 Geary St., San Francisco
Elsewhere, Blue Sky Gallery in Portland opens two concurrent exhibitions on Thursday that both deal heavily with modern technology and its pervasiveness in daily life.
First, Geolocation: UK, a collaboration between artists Nate Larson and Marni Shindleman, explores the relative notion of distance as perceived in an age of increasingly networked culture.
Start first at the Art Institute of Chicago with the premiere tonite of Harlem, U.S.A., a group of 25 vintage b/w prints by Dawoud Bey.
from the series Harlem, U.S.A.
© Dawoud Bey
Bey began photographing in Harlem in 1975 and first exhibited the set of prints prints as a solo show at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. The exhibition at AIC marks the first time since the Studio Museum showing that Harlem, U.S.A. has been exhibited again in its entirety. AIC also recently announced that it has added all 25 prints to its permanent collection.© Dawoud Bey
Bey, a professor of art at Columbia College Chicago, was raised in Queens but has deep family roots in Harlem. His studied documentation of the neighborhood reveals the intricacies of one of the most diverse neighborhoods in one of the most diverse cities in the world. He has discussed wanting to show all the various "types" of Harlem residents: the barber, the church ladies, the youth, etc. His dignified portraits accomplish this with a certain street photography ethos -- much distinguished from his contemporary works, which are more known for being large-scale color portraits made in controlled environments with more formal sittings.
from the series Harlem, U.S.A.
© Dawoud Bey
The exhibition at AIC opens tonite and runs through early September. In addition, the Renaissance Society Gallery at the University of Chicago will be showing a career survey of Bey's work beginning in a few weeks. More details on that coming soon.© Dawoud Bey
Harlem, U.S.A.
photographs by Dawoud Bey
2 May - 9 September 2012
Art Institute of Chicago
111 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago
Continuing in Chicago, Matthew Avignone has a solo show of his project Stranger Than Family, opening on Thursday nite at David Weinberg Gallery. The series is Avignone's documentation of his own family, as he and all his siblings -- some with life-inhibiting special needs -- have been adopted from overseas (Matthew being the oldest child).
from the series Stranger Than Family
© Matthew Avignone
Avignone brings together vernacular snapshots and family documents alongside his formal portraits and documentary images, allowing the viewer a close look at the family coming of age in an ordinary Chicago suburb. He documents the range of events that comprise many common family experiences: from the significant (i.e. births and funerals), to the small dramas of banal, everyday living.© Matthew Avignone
from the series Stranger Than Family
© Matthew Avignone
Avignone's intimate treatment reveals a multi-racial family structure woven together from a diverse fabric of innumerable strands and backgrounds -- a family that in certain ways typifies the more modern definition of "family" in today's increasingly global, cross-cultural societies, where many traditional notions of nuclear family have long since been cast aside. Yet at the same time, an understanding of his family's experience also reinforces an age-old mantra about the power of unconditional love in helping a family unit persevere.© Matthew Avignone
Stranger Than Family
photographs by Matthew Avignone
opening Thursday 3 May, 5-8pm
David Weinberg Gallery
300 W. Superior St., ste. 203, Chicago
Also on Thursday nite in Chicago, Kunz Vis Projects opens the group show Greyscale / Grayscale, featuring work by Jasmine Al-Masri, Linda Benjamin, RyKeyn Bailey, Sara Dauer, Ben Giska, Dusty James, Monique Roquet and Rachel West.
Shades of Gray
© Monique Roquet
This show brings together new works from a group of artists with vastly different techniques and approaches, uniting them under a theme of grey/gray: the amalgam of subtlety and abstract and shades of color swimming in between finite achromatic points -- be they socio-political dialogue, artistic genre, or anything else.© Monique Roquet
The artists here work across a variety of media from painting, collage, sculpture, photographs, and more, mainly pulling from individual experience (either strictly personal or anecdotal) but arriving as a collaborative body with compositions using found materials, collected objects, and other sources from the world around them, all layered atop eachother.
Beachball Universe with Gold Liquid
© RyKeyn Bailey
© RyKeyn Bailey
Greyscale / Grayscale
works by Jasmine Al-Masri, Linda Benjamin, RyKeyn Bailey, Sara Dauer, Ben Giska, Dusty James, Monique Roquet and Rachel West
opening Thursday 3 May, 5-7pm
Kunz Vis Projects (enter thru back alley)
2324 W. Montana St., Chicago
Among a slew of shows on the West Coast on Thursday, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco opens Mannequin, a series of brand new photographs by Lee Friedlander.
Tucson, 2011
from the series Mannequin
© Lee Friedlander
A legendary photographer who has sustained a 50-year career of influential art, Friedlander has now turned his camera on the glossy, reflective storefronts of modern-day fashion and consumerism. Returning to the hand-held 35mm format of much of his early work, Friedlander has roamed sidewalks across the country capturing, in his signature style, these somewhat surreal compositions of the visual tools and simulated figures of mass advertising. His images bring to mind the two-headed monster of sexual attraction and the allure of glamorous living that work together at the center of many modern ad campaigns encouraging the accumulation of material possessions. from the series Mannequin
© Lee Friedlander
New York City, 2011
from the series Mannequin
© Lee Friedlander
from the series Mannequin
© Lee Friedlander
Mannequin
photographs by Lee Friedlander
3 May - 23 June 2012
Fraenkel Gallery
49 Geary St., San Francisco
Elsewhere, Blue Sky Gallery in Portland opens two concurrent exhibitions on Thursday that both deal heavily with modern technology and its pervasiveness in daily life.
First, Geolocation: UK, a collaboration between artists Nate Larson and Marni Shindleman, explores the relative notion of distance as perceived in an age of increasingly networked culture.
Geolocation: Lost Followers Today, 2010
from the series Geolocation: UK
© Nate Larson and Marni Shindleman
As our society and our world become more connected at such an accelerating rate through technology such as cell phones, Internet, instant messaging, Skype, etc., many have asked some serious questions (and completed thorough research) about whether or not that connectedness is actually perpetuating the profound sense of loneliness and insolation that people hope for technology to abate in the first place.
In other words, these forms of interpersonal networking and virtual worlds are bringing people together in one sense (bridging a certain physical distance, perhaps), yet in a greater sense simultaneously creating a widening gap of emotional distance between people -- likely because of the technology's total inability to recreate or replace the benefits of face-to-face interaction, the intimacy of human touch, etc.
In their work, Larson and Shindleman confront these issues by mapping the GPS coordinates of posts made by Twitter users around the world (or, in the case of this specific exhibition, the UK) and then going to the place where each post originated and creating a photograph of what they find there. This ethnographic approach unites the physical and virtual realms, creating a photograph of a real-life placemarker for the mediated online action. Taken as a whole, their collection of images and texts catalogue the wide array of personal details and everyday mundaneness that people divulge about themselves online, stitching together a certain modern chapter of a larger historical narrative.
In their work, Larson and Shindleman confront these issues by mapping the GPS coordinates of posts made by Twitter users around the world (or, in the case of this specific exhibition, the UK) and then going to the place where each post originated and creating a photograph of what they find there. This ethnographic approach unites the physical and virtual realms, creating a photograph of a real-life placemarker for the mediated online action. Taken as a whole, their collection of images and texts catalogue the wide array of personal details and everyday mundaneness that people divulge about themselves online, stitching together a certain modern chapter of a larger historical narrative.
Geolocation: Deserve to Know, 2010
from the series Geolocation: UK
© Nate Larson and Marni Shindleman
from the series Geolocation: UK
© Nate Larson and Marni Shindleman
Blue Sky's second exhibition involves the increased (and slightly controversial, though I've sometimes been quick to defend it) use of Google Street View by artists, seen here in No Man's Land by Mishka Henner.
195 Via Milano, Castelnuovo del Garda, Veneto, Italy
from the series No Man's Land
© Mishka Henner
No Man's Land explores the marginal outskirts of urban and rural areas in Spain and Italy thru images captured by the Google technology. Scattered in these sweeping vistas -- many often quite beautiful and scenic -- we see what appear to be disparate groups of women soliciting sex by the roadside. Henner discovers these areas thru online forums where men distribute local knowledge about the location of sex workers, then frames and photographs the scenes from Google cameras. from the series No Man's Land
© Mishka Henner
Carretera de Gandia, Oliva, Valencia, Spain
from the series No Man's Land
© Mishka Henner
As has been written many times, and is readily apparent in other bodies of work based from Google Street View such as A Series of Unfortunate Events by Michael Wolf or A New American Picture by Doug Rickard, the Street View technology has ushered in an entirely new era of street photography, introducing seemingly endless possibilities for artists willing to explore the physical world thru this medium. What I find most curious about this methodology (and what is likely behind the venomous backlash from photographic purists and traditionalists) is how, by pulling from a vast index of literally millions of authorless images indexed only by location, the technology facilitates almost a Dada-ist mechanical approach to photographing, prompting a rather formidable challenge to the historical foundation of documentary photography and its emphasis on authentic creation and sourcing.from the series No Man's Land
© Mishka Henner
However, that being said, Henner's project does contribute some unique questions to such a conversation. For example on the one hand it could be said that, if a viewer feels compelled by this subject matter because they consider prostitution a social issue in need of remedy, then perhaps Henner's images bolster an awareness of the issue and the extent of its existence. It certainly leaves one to wonder if these random women, sitting out in the sun in semi-secluded locales for unknown hours to lure in passers-by for sex, have ended up here because of a decision they made on their own, or had they been forced as part of some larger, nefarious network based in organized prostitution, crime groups, etc.? Henner's series seems to give us few answers, and in that regard, the argument could be made that "documenting" these womens' existence from the far-away privilege of Google Street View -- instead of traveling to those specific locations to witness and gather information first-hand, as traditional documentary photographers might implore -- is a crisis of accountability on the artist's part. Then again, the disagreement here may have as much to do with the divergent expectations of intent and responsibility of artists vs. photojournalists (since at times the two camps seem insistent on drawing a very solid line in the sand between their respective practices).
Regardless of all that, I think Henner's project is a powerful document that encapsulates multiple contemporary issues, and in a sense even echoes some of the questions associated with Larson/Shindleman's project about our growing social isolation in spite of networking technologies. And of further significance, as the gallery rightly points out in their exhibition summary, the Street View technology is a curious combination of three key features of our age: car-centric living, Internet access, and the ubiquity of cameras.
Geolocation: UK
photographs by Nate Larson and Marni Shindleman
-and-
No Man's Land
photographs by Mishka Henner
opening Thursday 3 May, 6-9pm
Blue Sky Gallery
122 NW 8th Ave., Portland
Finally, sticking in the PacNW, Eirik Johnson debuts photographs from two new bodies of work in his solo show Camps + Cabins, opening Thursday nite at G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle.
Abandoned shack A, Crescent Lake mushroom camp, Oregon, 2011
from the series The Mushroom Camps
© Eirik Johnson
The grouping of images are drawn from two separate projects, The Mushroom Camps and Barrow Cabins. Both bodies of work continue Johnson's obsessive exploration of makeshift architecture, which we can easily see as solid evidence of man's ability to improvise and adapt to the surrounding environment. In the former series, Johnson photographs the lives of commercial mushroom hunters in the forests of the Cascade Mountains, detailing the experiences of rural locals, multi-generational Asian families, and Mexican migrant laborers thru photographic portraiture and study of their crafted campsites.from the series The Mushroom Camps
© Eirik Johnson
In the latter project, Johnson has traveled to the northern tip of the U.S. to photograph seasonal hunting cabins built by native Inupiat people near the Arctic Ocean. Johnson has chosen to photograph the sites when they are empty of their human inhabitants, allowing the viewer to focus specifically on the details of their ramshackle architecture and the tiny remnants of human presence (furniture, children's toys, etc.) in this harsh and distant landscape.
Cabin 06, Barrow, Alaska, 2010
from the series Barrow Cabins
© Eirik Johnson
from the series Barrow Cabins
© Eirik Johnson
Camps + Cabins
photographs by Eirik Johnson
artist reception Thursday 3 May, 6-8pm
exhibition ongoing thru 26 May
G. Gibson Gallery
300 S. Washington St., Seattle
