On view as part of the Pingyao International Photography Festival earlier this year. The Edge of Vision, curated by Lyle Rexer, presented a group of contemporary photographers who base their practice in some form of abstraction. Click and scroll the images for a virtual experience of the installation in China.
Special thanks to photographer Nils Duval and Matthieu Torrano from China Time Machine Image Centre, who created this VR. CTMIC was instrumental in printing this and several other exhibitions at the festival.
The exhibition, specially expanded for Pingyao, was divided into several sections: “The Aesthetics of Perception,” “The Politics of the Image,” and “The Poetics of Light, Space and Time.” Taken together they force us to ask, what, after all, is a photograph, and where does its meaning lie? In the picture itself? In the world or its phenomena? In us? These questions are as vital and open today as they were 170 years ago, when no one knew exactly what a photograph should look like or what it might disclose.
Artists included in this presentation are Bill Armstrong, Carel Balth, Ellen Carey, Richard Caldicott, Roland Fischer, Manuel Geerinck, Shirine Gill, Barbara Kasten, Seth Lambert, Charles Lindsay, Roger Newton, Nicki Stager, and Penelope Umbrico.
China: Friday, September 18: Aperture Editor, Lesley A. Martin and artist Penelope Umbrico arrive in the midst of installation at Pingyao International Photo Festival for The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography . 90% there … all images up; text panels still missing.
View new videos from the weekly series of artist’s interviews with Barbara Kasten and Carel Balth included in the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography.
In the first video-clip, Barbara Kasten presents her work Studio Construct 17 as based on physical constructions that play with light and are created only for the purpose of being photographed. By this approach, the photograph itself becomes the object and is removed from being representative or documentary. Kasten expands that while subject matter is inherent to photography, her images are unidentifiable and exist as records of light that explore spatial and formal ambiguity. This distance results in a more indirect connection between the viewer and the work.
In the second video-clip, artist Carel Balth explains the process behind his works Moving IV and Madrid V, and how his appropriation of images through a digital format functions as a new medium. Originally recorded as digital video taken by Balth, he carefully selected screen-grabs that are later printed on canvas called Piezographs. He explains that this approach creates a new vantage that confronts reality though light, space, time, and movement into a culmination of images. Balth likes the idea that people may not completely understand his work at first, and recommends The Edge of Vision by curator Lyle Rexer for further insight to his aesthetic.
View new videos from the weekly series of artist’s interviews with Ellen Carey and Manuel Geerinck included in the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography.
In the first video clip, Ellen Carey presents her works in the exhibition: the large-scale Pulls with Lifts and Drops of film pulled through the rollers of a Polaroid large-format camera and her color photogram, PushPins, where the artist used pushpins to perforate the photographic paper in the darkroom. Carey explains how abstraction in photography challenges the viewer to rethink the medium, and go beyond the narrative side to explore new arrays of light and color compositions as well as new processes using meaningful materials that reference the history of photography. She also highlights the physicality of her work often exhibited through large-scale installations.
In the second video clip, Belgian artist Manuel Geerinck, who started his career as a painter, speaks about his unique process combining his drawings that he then photographs in motion. Inspired by minimalism and the early days of photography, Geerinck explains how his work is at the crossroads of photography and painting as well as abstraction and figurative, always “at the edge.” He also speaks about his exploration of colors through the photographic medium.
As part of the interview series, watch new video clips of artists Bill Armstrong and Seth Lambert from the exhibition now on view through July 16 at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography curated by Lyle Rexer.
In the first video clip, Bill Armstrong puts in context his Mandala #450 piece that is in the show with his Infinity series of abstract blurred meditative images that he has been working on for the past 12 years. Going through his work since the 1980’s, Armstrong explains why he uses blurring as a process and his “painterly approach to photography.” At the end, he also introduces his new video work.
In the second clip, Seth Lambert contextualizes his work in the show Nothing on the Bed of an Epson Expression 10000XL within his Failures series of grids mapping out anything from beard hair, mirror pieces to nothing with a blank scan. The latter on view in the show still presents small residues called “artefacts” that Lambert has mapped out individually into a perfect grid that always fails. He also highlights the importance of the physical object in photography even if his work is often all digital and computer generated.
Click here to hear more about his process in an online radio show he did last week on ARTonAIR with curator Lyle Rexer, artists Charles Lindsay and Penelope Umbrico included in the exhibition.
Stay tuned next Thursday for video clips of Barbara Kasten and Ellen Carey.
In the first video clip, Penelope Umbrico presents her installation of photographs TVs (From Craigslist), a series of TV images for sale she culled from Internet with the reflection of flash, giving insight of the seller’s presence and creating an indirect intimacy. Interested in conceptual rather than formal abstraction, Umbrico considers herself a documentary photographer, “a traveler through media,” sourcing found generic images and examining in this work, the shift of value from an Internet image to a physical one in the art market.
In this second clip, Silvio Wolf, one of Italy’s entries into the 2009 Venice Biennale, speaks about his Horizon and Chance series combining straight photography and the unexposed ends of film rolls as negatives exposed to light. The end results are mesmerizing and meditative colorful images about light and absence of light. Wolf also mentions the importance of space in his work where the viewer reflected in the plexiglas is part of the image.
Saturday, May 16th the unprecedented exhibition curated by Lyle Rexer, The Edge of Vision opened to a crowd of over 1,000 attendees. Thanks so much to all the artists and supporters of this fabulous evening.
Note that Aperture has now extended the exhibition on view through July 16th!
Coinciding with the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, this is the second post of a weekly series of interviews on the Aperture blog for the duration of the show. The exhibition has now been extended to be on view through Thursday, July 16.
In the first video clip, conceptual artist Jack Sal speaks about his piece Sale/Sala (Salt/Room) while you watch him installing it. Inspired by the early days of photography, Sal uses the basic language of the medium in a minimalist and physical way, the mark of salt, steel and light on photographic paper, “making a three dimensional space out of a two dimensional idea, as if you were turning your camera inside out.” The picture is then constantly being made throughout the time of the exhibition.
In this second video of curator Lyle Rexer, he explains how photography is not necessarily based on our memories, recording particular moments as one often assumes but “most photographs, when they are taken, look forward in time or…there are many photographs that when they are excised from their particular moment, actually have no time.” The images Rexer selected for this exhibition highlight this aspect and question our essential way of looking at other photographs and at reality in general.
Coinciding with the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, a series of interviews will be posted every Thursday on the Aperture blog for the duration of the show. For the premiere, watch a video clip of curator Lyle Rexer speaking about how the project came about and explaining his curatorial choices. The exhibition gathers the work of nineteen international contemporary photographers who base their practice in some form of abstraction from highly conceptual to more documentary approaches. Rexer also explains his ground breaking photography exhibition encourages the viewer not to look at the photograph as a window but rather “to understand the relationship between the image and the surface.”
This second video clip presents artist Charles Lindsay included in the show, speaking about how he started working with his unique carbon emulsion process, his inspirations and the combination of his photographic, video and sound works.
Upcoming video clips include artists Bill Armstrong, Carel Balth, Ellen Carey, Manuel Geerinck, Barbara Kasten, Seth Lambert, Jack Sal, Penelope Umbrico, Silvio Wolf.
