May 12, 2006 Photography

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Haunch of Venison, London The Happy Lion, Los Angeles Martin van Zomeren/GMVZ, Amsterdam DCKT Contemporary, New York Loevenbruck, Paris Alison Jacques, London WOHNMASCHINE, Berlin Gimpel Fils, London Belfast Exposed Photography YANCEY RICHARDSON, New York         sign up!

Haunch of Venison, London ZARINA BHIMJI Zarina Bhimji (born Uganda, 1963) is an important international artist whose poignant photographic images and ethically engaged artworks have been shown in museums worldwide. For her first exhibition at Haunch of Venison, Bhimji will present a new series of photographs made between 1998 and 2006. The locations of these new large-format colour photographs were very carefully selected, and Bhimji reacted to the specific place and its environment, its scents and sounds, painstakingly composing beautiful and evocative images. In particular the works are concerned with the quality of light, and with the poetry of texture and resonant details Read on...Haunch of Venison

The Happy Lion, Los Angeles Kristian Burford : Rebecca Kristian Burford’s work attracts attention in a range of ways: certainly in his choice of hyperreal sculptural technique and the detailed construction of environments to house his figures, so too in the centrality of text-based narratives (the full titles being short stories in themselves), and perhaps most of all in the situations in which his characters are presented. Put most bleakly, Rebecca, the protagonist in this installation, is quadriplegic, depressed – or so we might well infer from the title – and has manipulated her young nieces into assisting her in a performance that is hard not to at some level understand as masochistic. We might ask many questions of this work: about the technique, the titling, the subject matter – but I think many of these can be condensed into a single question: what is the value of a work that presents such apparently disagreeable subject matter in such visual and textual detail? Michael Newall (Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.) Read on...The Happy Lion

Martin van Zomeren/GMVZ, Amsterdam Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson : Demolitions and Excavations The title, which was inspired by a sign of a contractor with the indication ‘Demoliciones y Excavaciones’, can be taken literally: demolitions and excavations. Of existing and underlying structures. The human mechanism of survival clearly has disconcerting aspects. Demolitions and excavations shows a different and hidden Europa. As always Libia and Ólafur show in their poetical observation a mixture of criticism and humour, but above all a love for life. Goya and Pasolini are always nearby. Read on...Martin van Zomeren

DCKT Contemporary, New York Oliver Boberg Inner connections between combined images, in both color and black & white, are created in each Seite / Page. Each image is no longer perceivable without the others and a connection, as subtle as it may be, is involuntarily made in the mind of the viewer. This is the first time that BOBERG has used black & white images and he has said “It is clear that we percept a non-color image in a different way than a color picture. They hold the notion of history, but also documentary style and maybe even nostalgia.” Read on...DCKT Contemporary

Loevenbruck, Paris Edouard Levé Against a black background and blacked-out floor, figures dressed in black engage in collective actions, the meaning of which evades us. The scenes are disturbing, enigmatic, or absurd, as if part of a dream, yet the characters interpreting them seem unmoved; they retain the same ceremonial seriousness in each situation. The models are of all ages and the black uniformity of their sombre clothing removes all clues as to their social status. Both the setting (a black studio) and the era (with nothing to indicate the time period, and the use of black and white photography) are difficult to place. In addition to this uncertainty, there remains the fantastical dimension of what stays untold; something that precedes or follows the moment of action, something we see only a fragment of. We are given a piece of the puzzle, and it is up to us to piece the rest together: just one frame rather than the whole film, a single line lifted from a whole book. Read on...Loevenbruck

Alison Jacques, London Uta Barth Over the past 15 years, Uta Barth’s work has repeatedly refused to address a central subject, presenting us instead with out-of-focus backgrounds, peripheral views and passing glimpses of scenes seen only in passing. The content of her work has always been that of vision itself and her often empty images point us back to our perceptual experience as the primary point of engagement. “The work invests in ideas about time, stillness, inactivity and non-event, not as something threatening or numbing, but as something actually to be embraced. There is a certain desire to embrace that which is completely incidental, peripheral, atmospheric and totally unhinged...” Uta Barth, from an interview with Matthew Higgs, published in Uta Barth, Contemporary Artist Series, Phaidon Press, 2004 Read on...Alison Jacques

WOHNMASCHINE, Berlin Charlie White : Everything is American Wohnmaschine is pleased to announce the first show in Germany of Los- Angeles based artist, Charlie White. Everything is American is a photographic series which re-creates and re-imagines iconic moments from history and myth to construct a revised history of human violence. From the gaze of a young Susan Atkins standing trial for the Tate-La Bianca murders, to the martyr-like pathos of an injured United States gymnast, the portraits in White’s new series create an arresting tension between the fictional and the recognisable. In these photographs no image is truly innocent; even at their most anonymous and lyrical, each subject in the series bears the overtones of a narrative that is inescapably American. Read on...WOHNMASCHINE

Gimpel Fils, London Christopher Stewart : Observations Kill House (2005) is a series of 7 photographs of a house the artist chanced upon in Arkansas, a house whose sole purpose is to facilitate the training of private military personnel in the skills of close quarters combat, house cleaning of an altogether different, darker kind. Whilst clearly a development of his long running examination of the security/surveillance industry Kill House would appear to be a distillation of the project; his practised distanced gaze is, here, further chilled in these depopulated images where absence only serves to heighten the viewer’s sense of foreboding Read on...Gimpel Fils

Belfast Exposed Photography THE BREATHING FACTORY by Mark Curran Mark Curran spent 9 months negotiating access to the Hewlett-Packard Technology Campus. The project began in April 2003 and was produced over a 20month period. Each site visit was pre-scheduled and cleared by security. The photographer was accompanied on site at all times and all images were vetted. Curran has made this Opolicing process¹ visible in the work, as a comment on the way that global capital investment is a highly managed and protected process. Curran creates an installation that echoes the homogenous and globally proliferated spaces of new, Opost-industrial labour practices. The Belfast Exposed gallery, itself the site of a former, Victorian shirt factory becomes a house of ghosts, surveying a future prospect. Read on...Belfast Exposed Photography

YANCEY RICHARDSON, New York last chance to see : Olivo Barbieri : Site Specific Barbieri describes Site Specific as “The world as a temporary site-specific installation | the foundation of our sense of belonging and our identity, seen from afar, as a great scale model: the city as an avatar of itself.” Photographing from a helicopter 300 to 500 feet above ground with a large -format camera and a tilt- focus lens, Barbieri reduces the epic to the miniature and grand structures meant to celebrate cities and endure time appear miniature and toy-like. The total Site Specific series encompasses Montreal, Jordan, Los Angeles, Turin and Shanghai Read on...Yancey Richardson