Indre Serpytyte's A State Of Silence

The new issue of 1000 Words Photography is now out and features some nice work, including a spotlight of Indre Serpytyte's project State Of Silence. Inspired by the mysterious death of her father, a Lithuanian minister working for the government, the artist began what she refers to as “indefatigable investigations” into the details surrounding his death. Serpytyte's stark, largely black and white still lives can be seen as an artistic inquiry into a tragedy that is nearly impossible to reconcile. More so, however, the images from State Of Silence read as an honoring tribute to someone who will be greatly missed. Below is Serpytyte's statement and an excerpt from the interview that accompanies the 1000 Words showcase:

"The Lithuanian papers wrote that it was a "Painful misfortune (a catastrophe)", when the Head of Government Security died. Albinas Serpytis died in the early hours of the 13th of October 2001, in a "car accident". No one seemed to know the details, or circumstances, or provide straightforward answers. His death was premeditated and brutal. For me this was sufficient proof, he had been eliminated. All that remains is silence, unknown circumstances. Hidden motivations. A chilling absence. This was my father. The subject of my indefatigable investigations."

-Indre Serpytyte


Pedro Vicente: The first thing I thought when I saw your images was that they were very aesthetic and visually pleasing. I would say, even, that they seemed to me, to some extent, peaceful, especially the paper or the typewriter ones. But when I faced the explanatory text accompanying your photographs it was like my perception was slapping my vision. I didn't see what I looked at. What role does text play in your photographs? Do you feel the text is part of your work?

Indre Serpytyte: At the time the text was very necessary to me, it just seemed right to have it. Seeing the events written in black and white helped me to come to terms with what had happened. In some ways it was like a full stop at the end of the sentence. At the start of the project, the text intended just for me, but through time, I found it hard to separate the two and now I think that the text has definitely become an inseparable part of this work. I understand that the juxtaposition of these two factors, the very visually pleasing images with such a personal and straight to the point piece of text causes friction, but it is this friction that I find fascinating. I think this friction portrays the exact emotional state I was in when these events occurred. The images portray the emotional coldness and distance towards the situation as they are very calculated and constructed therefore the text confronts the situation and the viewer head on. I hope this is how the work touches the viewers too.











All photographs from the series A State Of Silence

All Images © Indre Serpytyte

Vik Muniz's Verso

Vik Muniz has persisted as one of the most innovative and wonderfully confounding artists of the last 20 years. His work has consistently and intelligently challenged the conventions of artistic authorship and Muniz's new project Verso is certainly no exception. For Verso, the artist recreated in exact scale, detail and craftsmanship, the backs of canonical work of art from the conservation departments of MOMA, the Guggenheim and the Art Institute of Chicago. With an obsessive attention to detail, the "authentic looking labels, worn-away tape, faded pencil notations and actual period hardware and carpentry make it hard even for an expert to disbelieve they are seeing the actual backs of these masterpieces." From an unpublished interview in 2005, Muniz asserts:

"Whenever someone wants to see if an artwork is 'real', the first gesture is to look at its back or at it's base; the part of it that normally isn't visible to anyone else but experts, dealers, museum conservators or the artists' themselves. This happens because while the image's objective is to remain eternally the same, its support is constantly changing, telling its story, showing its scars, its labels and periodic clichés. So when a cousin of mine told me his 7-year old could paint a Picasso, I told him 'probably, but he couldn't do the back'. As a teenager, I used to fix the neighbor's TV as a hobby. I wanted to learn how to fix clocks too. Whenever something's function is basically visual, there is always an opening in the back for the curious to do it damage."

This work will be on view at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. from September 6 - October 11 for anyone in the New York area who's interested in seeing the show.

VERSO
Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd Street
New York, NY
September 6 – October 11, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 6, 6-8 pm









From Top To Bottom:

Verso (Starry Night), 2008

Verso (The New President), 2008

Verso (Nighthawks), 2008

Verso (The Winner in Broad Jump, Jesse Owens), 2008

All Images © Vik Muniz

Hijacked, Volume One: Australia and America

Hijacked, Volume One: Australia and America, the recently published monograph from Big City Press, has teamed up with Flak Photo for a feature that will share some of the photographs contained within the book. Below is a description of what Hijacked aims to accomplish.

"Shunning repetitive and predictable structures, Hijacked's aesthetic is directed by the mindset and energy of young and emerging practitioners. Embracing the prevailing wanderlust, their work exhibits a fascination with international subcultures, fragmented trends, alternate life styles and urban landscapes. Explorations of suburban pleasures are placed on par with 'high' artistic experimentation.

While assembling the visions of its contributors, Hijacked delves into the practical and conceptual issues of the world of contemporary photography. Interviews provide a social comment on the socio-scape of Australia and America, and highlights talking points from discussions with artists on communication, social awareness, capitalism and the impact of commerce on identity and artistic practice."

Make sure to check Flak Photo regularly for an overview of work from Hijacked, Volume One: Australia and America. Below are a few of my favorites from the images that have been posted so far.







From Top To Bottom:

Grant Willing, Car Interior, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2006

Greta Anderson, Float Like a Feather, Mount Eden, Auckland City, New Zealand, 2003

Timothy Archibald, Notes From The Appointment With Band Aid, El Sobrante, California, 2007

All Images © The Artists

Chris Bentley's Land, Man, Missile: New Mexico

Chris Bentley e-mailed me yesterday to share some images from his series Land, Man, Missile: New Mexico, a collection of photographs from a larger body of work entitled The Desert States. In his statement, Bentley explains:

"The land—in its vastness and aridity—defines the entire area. This geography has determined how the area developed and the type of person that lives here.

Historically, these states were not well populated. The rangeland and farming were generally poor. Now, of course, they have significant population growth. And, this is where nuclear weapons development and testing began."











All photographs from the series Land, Man, Missile: New Mexico

All Images © Chris Bentley

Joel Sternfeld's Oxbow Archive

Joel Sternfeld's new exhibition Oxbow Archive opens this Saturday, September 6 at Luhring Augustine in Chelsea. This new body of work (done in and around my hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts) examines seasonal passage in an age of vast climate change. The images from Oxbow Archive are both geographically and contextually rooted in art history, specifically in the tradition of 19th century American landscape painting. The notorious Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole made one of his most famous paintings in the same location that Sternfeld has been photographing. View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow, 1836 presents a bucolic, somewhat idealistic vision of nature's perfection. However, as it states in the press release for Sternfeld's upcoming exhibition:

"This work represents a departure from archetypal photographic depictions of nature; grandiloquent mountain views and dramatized skies are eschewed, as are ideal specimens of flora. Anthropomorphization of "perfect form in nature" does not occur; the geometric is not valorized. The photographs are not meant to be metaphoric equivalents of anything else. Rather, the images present themselves without pretense as a systematic index of seasonal progression."



Oxbow Archive
Luhring Augustine
531 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
September 6 - October 4

This exhibition coincides with the publication of Oxbow Archive, which will be avialable soon through Steidl.

From Top To Bottom:

Joel Sternfeld, March 13, 2006, 
The East Meadows, Northampton, Massachusetts, 2006

Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow, 1836

Works © The Artists

Dionisio González

I was browsing through the new issue of Beautiful Decay today and happened upon Dionisio González's work. His recent digital composites picture imaginary favelas in Sao Paulo, Brazil. For this project, González photographically fused the existing infrastructure with fantastical edifices that have no basis in reality. The imaginary additions are not the result of extracting actual structures from other photographs, they are pure digital fabrications that the artist creates from scratch. Unlike most metropolitan areas, the favelas of Sao Paulo do not subscribe to the traditional parameters of urban planning. The residents of these are areas erect their own homes and (almost continually) modify them as they see fit. As a result, the landscape is in continuous transition, shifting in a way that makes González's images, if not realistic, than at least plausible. In the press release for his exhibition at Fielder Contemporary, it states:

"Dionisio González is not only interested in the aesthetic aspect; his works also have a social facet. The artist is involved in a continuous discourse with the mayors’ offices in the various favelas surrounding São Paulo, to find ways to transform some of the building structures he has designed into reality. These buildings are mainly conceived as social centres, to improve the local population’s internal communication. In contrast to most architects and urban planners, who aim to impose a logical urban order on the favelas through their work, Dionisio González attempts to extend and improve the existing structures in line with the needs of the inhabitants, through constructive alternatives."









All Images © Dionisio González

A Conversation With Curtis Mann

Jörg over at Conscientious has just posted a wonderful new interview with artist Curtis Mann, previously discussed on this blog here. The discourse largely centers around the digital versus analog conversation. Mann discusses how the possibilities digital technology have heavily influenced his work, however, further articulates why he has persisted with the analog, some might even say antiquated, method of photographic production. Below is an excerpt of the interview.

Jörg Colberg: The lack of Photoshop as a tool only superficially makes your work different from digitally manipulated work, in the sense that in both cases the final image is being created from a source photograph (which most people, especially in the United States, would think of as something "real"), with orthodox restrictions of what a photograph is and means being discarded (in your case bleached away). So one could easily argue that you are engaging in expanding the boundaries of photography in a very similar fashion as people who digitally modify photographs. Is that a description you'd be comfortable with?

Curtis Mann: Definitely. I think my work is heavily influenced by the possibilities of digital manipulations and the many artists working with those tools. Fundamentally, digital has played an immense role in encouraging a healthy skepticism and disbelief in the image to a much larger amount of people than ever before. Once that truth is disrupted people are responsible for their own truths, or how much they want extract from an image. I am very much interested in following in these footsteps.

Formally, as someone who found photography while it was already in a digital era, I have always been enamored with the nearly infinite manipulative possibilities that the computer offers. So many artists are trying so many different things that I am always encouraged to be as curious, and challenging as possible when dissecting the photograph and its conventions.

I think digital has played a major role in actually encouraging a much more contemporary, conceptual and idea based approach at using physical, dare I say, alternative processes. Digital proved that no matter what tool you are using and how cool it looks, if that process is not part of the meaning and understanding of your work then it just becomes another Photoshop filter or an exercise in aesthetics.

Image © Curtis Mann