Exhibition on view:
January 7–February 4, 2012

Robert Berman Gallery
Bergamot Station:
2525 Michigan Avenue
Santa Monica, CA
(310) 453-7535

Robert Berman Gallery presents a collaborative exhibition from photographer Gerald Slota and filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute. Embracing themes of family and relationships, HOME.SWEET.HOME showcases the two-way effort of ominous photographic collages by Slota and accompanying suggestive text by LaBute.

The ideas for this exhibition began when Slota and LaBute started communicating via e-mail which developed into a series of menacing postcards titled, “Because the Darkness Feeds My Soul,” featured in Aperture magazine issue 196.

Artist Gerald Slota and Work Scholars, Photo by Elina Ruka

Anders Petersen install at Marvelli gallery, Photo by Elina Ruka

It is a great privlege to hear about a great photograph from the photographer himself. This past week Aperture Work Scholars had the opportunity to meet artists and gallerists at several new exhibitions in Chelsea.

The tour began with an artist led walkthrough of Gerald Slota’s recent collaboration with playwright Neil LaBute at Ricco Maresca gallery before continuing on to artist Marco Breuer’s show at Von Lintel gallery, concluding with a sneak-peak of Anders Petersen’s new exhibition at Marvelli gallery.

A new exhibit of works by artist Gerald Slota, who was featured in Aperture issue 196 , Home Sweet Home was created through correspondence with celebrated playwright, screenwriter and movie director Neil LaBute. The series, on view at Ricco Maresca gallery, explores ‘the sordid family secret’ at times verging on black humor. Slota’s charasmatic story-telling brought the exhibit to life. During a Q&A session we discovered the importance of experimentation in Gerald’s image making process.

At Von Lintel gallery we met the gallery co-director Dana Greenidge who gave us a detailed tour of Marco Breuer’s exhibit. Marco Breuer’s monograph Early Recordings was published by Aperture and showcased a survey of the artist’s conceptually driven work. His new exhibit Nature of the Pencil combines photographic elements with performative writings and drawings.

A sneak-peak of City Diary by Anders Petersen, who was featured on the cover of Aperture issue 198, on view at Marvelli gallery which had yet to open to the public at the time of our tour, revealed a marvelous black-and-white photographic journey through the honest and passionate human relations depicted in Petersen’s work. The photographer himself greeted us briefly before rushing away to finish installing the show.

This Work Scholar post is by Elina Ruka who currently interns for both the Sales and Limited-Edition Photographs Departments.

Elina is a recent graduate of Ecoles de Conde in France where she studied photography. Her favorite Aperture books are Kamaitachi and Winter Stories among others. Elina, coming from Latvia, loves to discover New York, lives in the moment, and documents her experiences in photographs and words on her blog.

Image by Gerald Slota / text by Neil LaBute

As Home Sweet Home, the new exhibition at the Ricco Maresca Gallery proves, a simple e-mail can go a long way. In the case of artists Gerald Slota and Neil LaBute, it resulted in a provocative yet poignant artist collaboration. Shot out into the depths of the internet, the initial e-mail sent by photographer Slota was a seed waiting to be planted; a great idea that needed mutual incentive for physical manifestation. That’s where LaBute, a renowned screenwriter and playwright, comes in. With his consenting reply, the duo set to work. The photographs—with Slota trademarks like vivid colors, collaged items, out-of-focus elements, and etched indentations—were like peeking into the bizarre dysfunctions of family life. LaBute’s brief accompanying text gives the necessary narrative to top off each piece, allowing his twisted writing style to shine through. The two artists during their correspondence never actually met, making the partnership even purer, with no distractions—just the art at hand.

The Slota / LaBute works are featured in Aperture magazine Issue 196, and as limited-edition postcards.

Home Sweet Home
On view: Thursday, October 14th – Saturday, November 13th, 2010

Ricco Maresca Gallery
529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10011
(212) 627-4819

Gerald Slota and Neil LaBute met by email, hoping to collaborate on a project. Throughout their rough correspondence, the pair hit upon the notion of a series of strange greeting cards, so beginning a journey where LaBute would attempt to strike the deepest and darkest chords of Slota’s psyche with his words. LaBute would feed the photographer twisted or sad lines and Slota would take inspiration, scratching out eyes, photocopying faces, and so on. Nothing was taboo or off-limits.

Fulfilling the duo’s original intentions for the project, Aperture is pleased to present the Because the Darkness Feeds My Soul limited-edition postcards. These were created in conjunction with an article of the same name published in Aperture magazine, issue 196 (Fall 2009), where the work was originally published.

Click here to purchase your set of Because the Darkness Feeds My Soul exclusively through Aperture.

For the first time ever, the cover of Aperture features a drawing, not a photograph, as the cover image. In issue #196, these vibrant abstract works from William Eggleston are published for the first time and showcase a rarely seen part of the artist’s career. Also featured is a selection of William Klein’s work from 1956, soon-to-be-published in Rome (Aperture, October 2009), an examination of the role of monuments in photography by Mark Alice Durant, a review of ICP’s Year of Fashion from Holly Brubach, and Luc Sante‘s investigation into the early-twentieth-century photographic postcard. Philip Lopate also examines Sally Gall‘s new images of insects, Rob Hornstra documents less-than-fortunate Russians, photographer Gerald Slota and playwright Neil LaBute collaborate to create some very chilling scenarios, Debbie Fleming Caffery documents her native Louisiana, and more.

Pick up your copy at newsstands nationwide, buy the issue here, or click here to subscribe to Aperture.

Reader challenge: What exact medium does William Eggleston use to make these drawings?