Six Color Curl 2008 © Walead Beshty

Exhibition on view:
Directions—Walead Beshty: Legibility on Color Backgrounds
Thursday, April 30–Sunday, September 13, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue at Seventh Street SW
Washington, D.C.
(202) 633-4674

This spring, the Hirshhorn Museum presents Directions: Legibility on Color Backgrounds by the conceptual artist Walead Beshty, whose abstract images question the fundamental principles of modern art and the nature of photography. His mesmerizing photographs are mysterious and a product of his enduring fascination with modernist visual culture. He often works with historical formats, including stereographs and photograms, but he also makes use of more recent technologies, such as color processors and digital printers.

The fundamentals of this body of work are found in a camera-less process discovered by early twentieth-century artists László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, who produced unique, black-and-white prints by placing objects on photosensitive paper and then exposing them to light. Beshty re-invents this technique by making use of color processing and large-sale printers. He also curls or folds the photographic paper before exposing it to light, which creates luminous, elusive abstractions. His photograms are an aesthetic study and bring attention to the ways in which photography shapes our understanding of both history and the world around us.

Walead Beshty was featured in the Fall 2008 issue of Aperture magazine.

Clouds, Death Valley, 1938 © Edward Weston

Exhibition on view:
Through April 25
Silverstein Photography
535 West 24th St.
New York, New York
(212) 627-3930

This is your last chance to see Cloud 9, a group exhibition displaying the work of renowned photographers Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston. The exhibition is a collection of nine original, vintage photographs of the sky, seen through the lenses of these great masters.
The abstract formation and fleeting nature of clouds, which comes into play in these photographs, evokes dreamy emotions and ideas, and creates a sense of mystery.

Boarding House © Roger Ballen, 2008, from the series Boarding House.

Exhibition on view:
Roger Ballen: Boarding House
Thursday, March 5–Sunday, May 31
Ontario College of Art and Design, The Professional Gallery
100 McCaul Street
Toronto, Ontario

FREE

The Ontario College of Art and Design currently presents a solo exhibition by the critically acclaimed South African photographer Roger Ballen. The exhibition was produced in conjunction with Ballen’s latest publication The Boarding House (Phaidon, April 2009).
Ballen is known for his thought-provoking photography and his particular attention to rich detail. His photographs are like images from a waking dream: compelling and surrealistic with sparkles of dark humor and an altered sense of space.

For Ballen, standard divisions as subject, object, motif and background are elusive. Rather, his controversial artistic vision for photographic detail transforms ordinary objects and fragmented figures into powerful social statements with a sense of psychological complexity.

Join the artist for a talk on Wednesday, April 8, 6:30 pm at the Professional Gallery at OCAD.

Roger Ballen was featured on the cover and in the in the winter 2003 issue of Aperture. Also available from Aperture is Roger Ballen’s limited edition print, Hideaway, 2003.