The Exposure Project

Thursday, November 12, 2009

We Can't Paint: Interview With John Feinstein

Noel Rodo-Vankeulen posted an interview with Jon Feinstein on the We Can't Paint today. Their exchange largely centers around the ideas behind Feinstein's latest curatorial effort Still Life - an exhibition which is currently on view at the Camera Club of New York. Below is excerpt from their discussion:

"NRV: Do you feel as if we are at a shifting point in the medium where photographers are beginning to see the notions of ‘the genre’ collapsing? It’s almost as if traditional critical ideas and the complications of being a viewer have become intertwined.

JF: I don’t necessarily think that we’re at a point in which the idea of the “genre” is necessarily collapsing, but instead is shifting and morphing more rapidly than it has before. Many of the photographers in the show come from various practices that allow their work to fit into, or borrow from multiple genres at once. Ann Woo, for example, has a background as a fashion and advertising photographer, which in many ways can be seen in how she makes her personal work. While her non-commercial portraits are not necessarily “product shots”, they are often void of emotional exploration, and generally have the same aesthetic quality as her images of sunsets, and still lifes. Similarly, Lyndsy Welgos’ semi nude, often androgynous portraits borrow from fashion/lifestyle and conceptual practices.

NRV: You make an important point here. Over the last ten or so years photographers have taken on more dynamic roles both in their own practice and within the ‘art world’. It’s almost common for many artists to collectively engage in, say, the blogosphere, or as curators, commercial photographers, writers, etc. I suppose what I’m getting at more specifically is if you think these inverted conventions of portraiture could become problematic in their ‘cool’ navigation of the subject? There has always been is a certain sanctity surrounding photographic portraiture as a mediation between the viewer and subject. Are these new investigations different in relation to the negative aspects of Hutchins and Davidson’s work - or does it matter?

JF: I think there have historically been different camps of opinions regarding portraiture, ranging from the social documentary work of August Sander to the emotive, humanistic or meditative approaches of artists like Rineke Dijkstra, Amy Elkins, and Shen Wei, to the Ruff camp (a large anchor for this show) who critique and reject notions of truth in portraiture, as well as the idea of any kind of sanctity between subject and viewer.

I don’t necessarily think that the photographers inverting the conventions of portraiture are “problematic”, nor do I think that they are necessarily doing something that has not been done before. The kind of inversion that you speak about already occurred decades ago, with artists like Sherrie Levine, and Cindy Sherman and many of the other appropriation based artists included in “The Pictures Generation” show that was recently up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I think we’re at a point where we need to do more than simply cry “problematic” when looking at the work of photographers like Hutchins and Davidson, and instead look to their/ their peer’s work and its criticism, as a means of understanding contemporary work.
One of the ideas behind this show was to look at the idea of objectification from a purely literal perspective. Instead of simply saying “this work is problematic” it attempts to literally investigate the idea of intentionally making pictures of people without any intention of exploring an inner dialogue. Both these new photographers, and Hutchinson/Davidson dealing with similar ideas, but these new photographers are privileged with over 60 years of theory and academic discourse."

Leslie Grant's Pointing

My friend Tim reintroduced me to the work of Leslie Grant the other day. I had seen some of her images at one point, but had no idea how inspiringly prolific she is. The "Found" section of her site has some truly wonderful collections. Of particular interest was her series Pointing, posted below.

From "Pointing"
© Leslie Grant

Monday, November 9, 2009

Benjamin Bruneau's Every Wall Drawing #146

Benjamin Bruneau's confounding project Every Wall Drawing #146 is a virtual art making machine that randomizes versions of LeWitt's Wall Drawing #146. The artist goes on the elaborate:

"Every Wall Drawing #146 deals with my interest in Sol LeWitt’s notion of the idea as a machine for making art, taking a very literal interpretation of his Paragraphs on Conceptual Art. In order to actually build a ‘machine’ to make art, one must take into account the human element that goes into producing a LeWitt— a lot of subtle sensibility and personal judgment that makes a work both random yet perversely organized. Randomly producing such results is difficult, but a system that lent itself well to automation was Wall Drawing #146 (1972): “All two-part combinations of blue arcs from corners and sides and blue straight, not straight and broken lines.”

The result is an exercise in pure decisionless conceptual art adhering strictly to LeWitt’s concept, as described in Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, producing (theoretically) every possible iteration of Wall Drawing #146 in the fixed dimensions of a virtual gallery space."

Below are just a few of the seemingly endless possibilities...

"Every Wall Drawing #146"
© Benjamin Bruneau

Dru Donovan

I've been meaning to post Dru Donovan's work for some time now. You can enjoy more of it here and here.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Still Life

Thursday's shaping up to be a good night for photo openings in New York. In addition, to the Dream Boats opening in DUMBO, the Jon Feinstein-curated Still Life exhibition will host its reception at the Camera Club. Details below:

"Stephen Sitting June 2009"
© Lyndsy Welgos

Still Life
Curated by Jon Feinstein

Exhibiting photographers: Erica Allen, Michael Bühler-Rose, Robyn Cumming, Louis S. Davidson, John Hutchins, Lyndsy Welgos, and Ann Woo

On view: November 5th – December 19th, 2009
Opening reception: Thursday, November 5th from 6–8 pm

The Camera Club of New York
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206
(bet. 8th and 9th Avenues)
New York, New York 10018
212.260.9927 | cameraclubny.org

Gallery hours: Monday–Saturday 12-6 pm

"Still Life examines a tendency in contemporary portraiture to remove the subjectivity of the persons photographed, literally transforming them into objects. The artists depict people as matter rendered through light and color, with emphasis placed on their formal or cultural qualities above all others. The exhibition juxtaposes this contemporary work with studio portraits from the Camera Club Archives, fostering a discussion about the relationship between classical idealized studio portraiture and contemporary critical portraiture.

With their bust portraits, Lyndsy Welgos and Ann Woo turn their subjects into nothing more than swatches of light color and gray tonality, and engage little with their individual identities. While their subjects are nude, the images are less about their personal sexuality or vulnerability and more about their physical surface. Michael Bühler-Rose’s portraits cast western women who were raised in India, as cultural objects. Unlike Woo and Welgos’ stark socially removed explorations of light and form, the women in Bühler-Rose’s pictures contain heavy social and cultural signifiers, as the women are adorned with various elements of eastern and western culture. They display heavily directed gestures and costuming and pay homage to orientalist painting, but we know little about their identity below the surface cues.

Erica Allen’s Untitled Gentlemen uses anonymous faces from found barbershop portraits to explore representations of identity. Appropriated and repositioned, the actual identities of the men remain as lost as they are on the walls of barbershops. The portraits comment on larger issues of gender while avoiding any appearance of personal identity or inner dialogue. Lastly, Robyn Cumming’s work addresses these ideas on the most direct level as she photographs women fused with flowers and other symbols of femininity, literally turning them into objects."

Dream Boats At Umbrage

The newly assembled Dream Boats collective, comprised of Adam Golfer, Joe Leavenworth, TJ Proechel and Daniel Shea, will be presenting their inaugural exhibition at the Umbrage Gallery in DUMBO this week. All of you photography-loving New Yorkers out there should show some support for these talented young artists and swing by the opening for the festivities. If you need more convincing (which you shouldn't) the Dream Boats are also offering an affordable print sale in conjunction with the show. Images range in price depending on size and edition number and will be available through the gallery. Check out the editions here. The statement below speaks to the group's collective mission:

"As a group, Dreamboats adds to the growing disambiguation between working personally and working editorially. Members of the collective, who met at Maryland Institute College of Art, are primarily engaged in contemporary fine art and social documentary practices, but their professed intention is to circumvent the traditional photographic establishment to create a self-sustaining network of distribution and support for the creation of new photographic works. The works selected for the exhibition are from each artist’s recent body of work: Adam Golfer’s series, Kin*, Joe Leavenworth’s Pictures from Home, TJ Proechel’s Dream House, and Daniel Shea’s Untitled (Baltimore)."

Dream Boats
Umbrage Gallery
111 Front Street #208
Brooklyn, NY 11201

November 5th - December 22nd
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 5th, 6 - 8 pm

See you there!