Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
Between 10th and 11th Avenues
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Aperture Gallery will be closed during February 2012 for renovation.  
Bookstore hours during renovation:
Monday–Friday, 10:00 am–6:00 pm 
Saturday & Sunday, closed

Holiday closures:
February 20, 2012  
May 28, 2012  
July 4, 2012  
September 3, 2012  
October 8, 2012  
November 22–23, 2012  
December 24–25, 2012 
December 31, 2012–January 1, 2013

Angry Black Snake,
Photographs by Michael Corridore

Exhibition on view:
Thursday, February 25, 2010 –Saturday, April 17, 2010

Artist Reception
Thursday, March 11, 2010
6:00–8:00 pm

As part of its ongoing mission to support the work of emerging photographers, Aperture is pleased to exhibit the work of Australian photographer Michael Corridore, winner of the 2008 Aperture Portfolio Prize, in our project space (adjacent to the main gallery). The prints will be sold directly through Aperture, and proceeds from sales will benefit the artist and the Aperture Emerging Artist Fund.

In the words of Aperture book publisher Lesley A. Martin, “Corridore’s project, Angry Black Snake, is an exercise in minimalism. Each image has been pared down to the barest of elements—urgent gestures and barely traceable figures cloaked in smoke and dust. Yet each image pulses with palpable emotional tension, telegraphed by these barest of representational sketches and the subtle shifting colors of the clouds that descend upon each scene like a flimsy curtain.”

As Corridore describes it, the project began as part of a larger portrayal of spectators at various events, including auto races, but became increasingly focused on those few moments in which the event and the landscape in which it take place come into direct and violent contact, for all intents and purposes eliding the spectator from the scene almost entirely. Car race or apocalyptic collision, the true nature of these events is never fully disclosed. Behind the scrim of kicked up particulate matter, however, it’s evident that there is something afoot. The few discernable figures raise their arms—in victory, or perhaps to call out in distress; eyes are covered or screened for a better view. The work is remarkable for its use of restraint as a strategy to immerse the viewer in an indecipherable yet tangible Sturm und Drang.

Michael Corridore is a graduate of Photography Studies College, Australia. He opened exhibitions of this work at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, the Australian Centre for Photography in January 2009 and, concurrently in May 2009, at the Ipswich Art Gallery and Gippsland Art Gallery. Corridore is currently based in New York City and Sydney, Australia.