INTERVIEW: THE RIGHT ART FOR YOUR HOME

Photographs by Ken Rosenthal (left) and Antony Crossfield (right) installed in NYC homes. 

Owner of the Klompching Gallery, Debra Klomp Ching, was recently interviewed for the 'Long Island For Sale' Real Estate website. In the article, she talks about the process for buying original fine art photographs for the private home.

"The right artwork will be one that 'lives'. What I mean by that, is that you discover something new in the work over time, and that your relationship with it - or appreciation of it - alters and grows ... We have many clients who bought their first original artwork from us, and keep returning to build their collection".—Debra Klomp Ching

The link to the full interview is here. 

AIPAD 2015: LISA M. ROBINSON

Wish, 2005

Series Title: Snowbound

Number of artworks at AIPAD: 2

Edition: 15 + 2APs

Size: 28" x 36"

Medium: C-Type

Year: 2003-2007

Photographed over the course of five winters, the landscapes in Snowbound are pristine in their sparse whiteness. The minimalist compositions have a meditative quality that causes the spectator to be drawn into the perfected white-on-white. They exude a neutrality of tone in which the ground recedes into the sky, mirroring the envelopment of human presence by the binding snowfall. Accents of color are signs that betray the empty loneliness; they prick through the whiteness, at times with a surreal incongruity. As quiet observations of our human condition, these metaphorical studies perceptively capture notions of transience, loss and enlightenment. 

The critically acclaimed series was published as a monograph by Kehrer Verlag in 2007, and the photographs went on to be exhibited across numerous venues in the US and internationally. 

Lisa M. Robinson graduated cum laude from Columbia University and received her MFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She has won several awards including a Fullbright Grant, was an Evelyn Stefansson Nef Fellow at the MacDowell Colony and an artist-in-residence at the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego), Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Fidelity Investments amongst others.

At the AIPAD Photography show, two Artist Proofs of Wish and Solo are presented for sale. With the edition of these two artworks now sold out, these photographs are the last available to acquire. 

AIPAD 2015: JIM NAUGHTEN

Herero Cadet in Kilt, 2012

Series Title: Herero

Number of artworks at AIPAD: 8

Edition: 10 + 2APs & 3 + 2APs

Size: 24" x 20” & 50” x 41”

Medium: C-Type

Year: 2012

The photographer, Jim Naughten, has an abiding interest in collective perceptions of history and relationships with the past.  With this series of portraits, he is not so much interested in the individuals themselves as subjects, but the costumes being worn and their significance in forming a cultural identity.

In the case of the Hereros, it is the adoption of 19th Century European clothing, originally introduced to the Herero people by German missionaries, traders and immigrants during the time of Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Taken out of the context of the subjects’ everyday lives, the portraits are photographed against the stark backdrop of the Namib Desert. Each figure is isolated, bringing forth the vivid colors of voluminous petticoated gowns, cattle-horn-shaped headdresses and colorful military uniforms, to center stage in a spectacular fashion. The unusual vantage point presents the subjects—although anonymous—as empowered, stoic and regal.

Gibbon, 2014

Series Title: Animal Kingdom

Number of artworks at AIPAD: 2

Edition: 10 + 2APs

Size: 18" x 23"

Medium: Archival Pigment Print

Year: 2014

"Jim Naughten is an artist who understands the transformative effects that photography can have on a subject. In each of his previous projects he has been concerned with reanimating  history. His latest images of Victorian and Edwardian zoo-logical specimens continue this overarching visual enquiry  but incorporate in addition a fascinating venture into three-dimensional imaging. They are captivating enough even when  seen in two dimensions. But once you plunge into the marvel  of their stereoscopic depth you are transfixed. Through the  act of viewing, an intangible transformation takes place. While  the photographs exist in physical form on paper, they also live as an experience, a beautiful illusion held in the mind. 

Naughten embodies the fertile marriage between nature  and art in his Animal Kingdom. He dedicated a year refining  the project, solving technical challenges and gathering images during visits to numerous museums. The photo- graphs are individually coherent, but form part of a typology, a comparative study of types. Embracing the aesthetic and working reality of the archive, he shows the patina of time and handling in the fading labels, old typefaces and peeling black backing paint of the specimens in fluid. He also echoes museums’ classification systems, arranging his final edited  fifty images into five groups — Marine, Reptile, Mammal,  Avian and Primate – reflecting the sequential and chronological evolution of man."—Martin Barnes Senior Curator of Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Jim Naughten (b. 1969) is an internationally-exhibited artist, including a solo show at the Imperial War Museum in London and inclusion in the UK’s Royal Academy Summer Show (2012). He is the recipient of several awards, including a commendation from The National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. His first series of photographs, Re-enactors, was published as a monograph (Hotshoe Books, 2009), with several photographs acquired by The Imperial War Museum (UK). The Hereros series was published as Conflict and Costume (Merrell, 2013).

To learn more about Jim Naughten's newly released Animal Kingdom series, view a video HERE, in which the artist talks about the work. 

AIPAD 2015: SIMON ROBERTS

Clevedon A, 2011

Series Title: Pierdom

Number of artworks at AIPAD: 2

Edition: 7 + 2APs & 4 + 1AP

Size: 20" x 24” & 48” x 60”

Medium: C-Type

Year: 2010-2013

Pierdom is a comprehensive and stunning survey of Britain's 19th Century pleasure piers. Simon Roberts has turned his camera to the specific architectural remnants that bear witness to leisure of the past. The large-scale color photographs are often made from elevated positions—a trademark of Roberts' oeuvre—and with the use of large-format film. The photographer has meticulously utilized formal devices associated with the picturesque—asymmetry, perspective and juxtaposition—resulting in an outstanding body of work that celebrates color, form and detail.

"Roberts' work is significant because he combines a respect for his subject and the desire to communicate important social, economic and political issues, with a contemporary and highly talented approach to image making. His approach is one of creating wide-ranging surveys of our time, which he does through eloquent and arresting photographs."—Greg Hobson, Curator of Photographs, National Media Museum, 2011

Simon Roberts lives and works in Brighton, UK. His photographs have been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at the National Media Museum (UK), Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and Contemporary Art, Shanghai. His work is represented in major public and private collections, including the Deutsche Borse Art Collection, George Eastman House, Pallant House and Wilson Centre for Photography.

The series is the subject of Roberts' third monograph, Pierdom, published by Dewi Lewis in 2013.

AIPAD 2015: MAX DE ESTEBAN

Esteban's overall photographic practice explores socio-political concepts within visual structures of serialization and repetition. At the 2015 AIPAD Photo Show, we will present Proposition One: Only The Ephemeral and Proposition Four: Heads Will Roll. 

PO7, 2011 from Proposition One: Only The Ephemeral

Series Title: Proposition One: Only The Ephemeral

Number of artworks at AIPAD: 4

Edition: 5 + 1AP in each size

Size: 20.7” x 27.6” & 39.4” x 52.5”

Medium: Archival Pigment Print

Year: 2011

With this series, Max de Esteban turns his camera toward recent cutting-edge technology—utilized in the creation and communication of art—that is now considered obsolete. Through a time-consuming and meticulous process, he dis-assembles apparatus such as film projectors, 35mm film cameras, VHS tape players and record players. Piece-by-piece, the parts are painted white, the machines are then reassembled and photographed at different stages of being re-built. The photographed layers are themselves assembled into a single image, resulting in x-ray-like photographs that are reminiscent of architectural cyanotypes.

The precision inherent in the photographs bring to mind the idea of a technological taxidermy that removes nostalgia, yet performs the role of memento mori for machines that have become obsolete and may soon be forgotten.

This work can be found in several private and public collections. Most recently, the Deutsches Technik Museum in Berlin acquired 15 photographs from the series for its collection. 

Transforming the Labyrinth, 2013

from Proposition Four: Heads Will Roll

Series Title: Proposition Four: Heads Will Roll

Number of artworks at AIPAD: 1

Edition: 5 + 1AP in each size

Size: 25” x 19” image on 28” x 22” sheet & 45” x 35” image on 49” x 39” sheet

Medium: Archival Pigment Print

Year: 2013

The Proposition Four: Heads Will Roll series examines the non-stop, daily flood of images that impact peoples' thoughts, memories, desires, dreams – even the very concept of reality. At a time of accelerated technological change, Max de Esteban layers and flattens multiple images into a final image, utilizing digital tools to present a cacophony of information that is at once dense with information yet visually legible. 

This series is the subject of the monograph, 'Heads Will Roll', published by Hatze Cantz in 2014, and will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Klompching Gallery in September 2015.

Max de Esteban holds graduate degrees from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya and Stanford University, as well as a PhD from the Universitat Ramon Llull. He is a former Fulbright Scholar, and his photographs have been exhibited throughout Europe. He lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.

AIPAD 2015: ODETTE ENGLAND

Develop Before 07/1991 (Kodacolor Gold 200 12),  2014-2015

Series Title: Develop Before

Number of Artworks at AIPAD: 5

Edition: 3 + 1AP

Size: 20"x20" image on 24x24" sheet

Medium: Archival Pigment Print

Year: 2014–2015

Home is the center-weight of Odette England's artistic practice, with memory and forgetting being the counterbalances. Her photographs are fragile, contemplative and temporal spaces. She works with expired film, vintage cameras, damaged negatives and alternative photo processes; exploring the volatility of identity, emphasizing the unstable nature of the past/present and the parent/child seesaw.

The Develop Before series continues these overall themes. Completed 2014–2015, this series of twelve photographs is newly released to the market, with their exhibition at AIPAD 2015, being their first-time showing. 

"Grandpa was a collector – matchboxes, bird’s eggs, seeds, postcards – but one of his most curious collections comprised old Kodak 126 film boxes, each neatly unfolded, held together in a stack with a thin rubber band and placed inside a worn, faded green plastic bag hidden in the back of a freezer.  On the outside of each box, where Kodak had printed 'Develop Before' together with the film’s expiry date (a practice that dates from the end of the 19th century) Grandpa had circled the date in red pen, as if to ensure that the snapshots he took would be revealed at their very best and 'freshest'.

What struck me wasn’t that the boxes themselves had expired, but that they were simultaneously the same and different, much like family snapshots.  There is homogeneity to how we make snapshots the world over, both in terms of subject matter and our behaviour (as subjects ourselves) in front of the lens.  Grandpa's boxes have their own unique marks of age – wrinkles, scars, stains, bruises – things we tend to avoid in family photography.  They were also never intended to be subjects of photography: boxes are simply trash – nothing of value, though to Grandpa, worth something.  I was compelled to photograph them, using a heavily modified Kodak Instamatic, expired photography chemicals and a scanner."—Odette England

Collections holding the work of Odette England include the New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe), George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film (Syracuse) and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago).

AIPAD 2015: HELEN SEAR

Inside The View, No. 10 (2005)

Series Title: Inside The View

Number of Artworks at AIPAD: 8

Edition: 5 + 2APs

Size: 13.25"x13.24" image on 15.75"x15.75" sheet

Medium: C-Type

Year: 2005–2008

Inside The View is an exceptional collection of photographs, wherein Helen Sear addresses the notion of work, labor of the hand and time in the process of image making. Sear also contributes to the long history of montage by superimposing two images — one a portrait of a woman and the other a landscape. The image is then erased through a complex and painstaking process of digital drawing, with a lace-like network of lines based upon the patterns of sewing or hand woven lace making.

The result is a wonderful play on vision, whereby the figure and ground appear and disappear within the resulting lines of erasure. In many ways, the lines of erasure are the image; they form a veil to look at and to look through. Amongst other things, Sear is intrigued with the viewer’s habits of looking, and in this context she views the photographic medium as not fixed or entirely knowable.  

“Within the multiple layers of Sear’s art we face the complex questions of work and invention. The innovative labour of image craft is central here. She does things few others do with the medium ... It is a restless process of intellectual risk, aesthetic demand and technical experiment.”—David Campany (2006).

In making these images, Sear has been inspired by the works of Helen Chadwick and Jo Spence, as well as that of the northern romantic tradition of painting. The title of the work refers to a series of collages, A L’Interieur de la Vue, by Max Ernst.

Helen Sear’s work has been published in Arts Review, Creative Camera, Art Newspaper and Art Monthly amongst others. Collections holding her work include Ernst & Young, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Council (Rome) and the Paul Wilson Collection. She lives and works in Wales (UK).

In 2014, Helen Sear was selected by the Welsh Arts Council to represent Wales at the 56th Venice Biennale, with a solo exhibition at the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Via Garibaldi, Venice, May 9 – November 22, 2015.