Thursday, April 14, 2016

AIPAD 2016: RICHARD TUSCHMAN


Couple In The Street, 2014

Series Title: Once Upon A Time In Kazimierz
Number of artworks at AIPAD: 1
Edition: 2 + 1AP
Size: 63"x43"
Medium: Archival Pigment Print
Year: 2014

Additional Editions: 24"x18" | 36"x24" | 5+1AP in each size.

While Tuschman continues to pay tribute to those artists who have inspired him—Balthus, Brandt, de Chirico, Vermeer—the series also demonstrates a significant development in Tuschman’s oeuvre. The artist’s Eastern European Jewish ancestors resided in the vicinity of Kazimierz until circa 1900, and this forms part of the basis for weaving together a fictional narrative with strands of cultural and family history.

Well known for his Hopper Meditations series, the artist’s process continues to be labor intensive and meticulous. The staged photographs result from a sophisticated marriage of miniature dioramas with life-size models. The sets are photographed after being hand-built by the artist over several months, with models photographed separately and composited into the scenes. The resulting photographs are visually stunning constructions, richly imbued with nuances of Jewish customs and a sense of place.

References to cinema and theatre resonate across the work. While the artworks are constructed in an exacting manner, they are also deliberately made to fall away from reality—enhancing their theatricality—and to project a level of the surreal and a dreamlike quality. Each image can also be seen to perform as a film still, with each part adding to a larger narrative arc. Once Upon a Time in Kazimierz, as a chronologically sequenced story, leaves just enough gaps and open-endedness, to enable the viewer to impose a tale of their own, highlighting in many respects, the fluidity of dreams and of memory.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

AIPAD 2016: HELEN SEAR


Caetera Fumus, 2015

Edition: 5 + 2AP
Size: 41"x33"
Medium: C-Type mounted to plexi
Year: 2015
Helen Sear is renowned as one of Wales’ most significant contemporary artists. Her practice can be characterized by her exploration of the crossover between photography and fine art, her focus on the co-existence of the human, animal, and natural worlds.
With an exemplary track record for producing high quality, conceptually rigorous work, Helen Sear’s current work shows particular maturity and sophistication, seamlessly moving between expanded notions of photography, sculpture and video, with the artist exhibiting great command of different materials and production processes.
The photographic artwork pictured here, was showcased at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), where she represented Wales with a solo exhibition in the Santa Maria Ausilliatrice. Caetera Fumus subtly references Mantegna’s third painting of Saint Sebastian, using it as a spatial guide onto which Sear has placed her own imagery and meaning. The vivid color of the rape seed, the red arrows piercing canvas and air rather than flesh, along with the clever layering of perspective and material, all combine to suggest an untouchable reality.
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).

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

AIPAD 2016: CORNELIA HEDIGER


Dr. Christiane S., 2015

Series Title: Puppenhaus
Number of artworks at AIPAD: 3
Edition: 2 + 1AP
Size: Various
Medium: Hand-made photo-collage (mixed media)
Year: 2015–2016

With this new series, Cornelia Hediger brings together meticulously constructed photographs, that are inspired by the photo collages of Hannah Hock, John Heartfield and Grete Stern. The artist builds her fine artworks from a combination of digital and traditional photographs, scanned wallpaper, cardboard and paint. The 'imperfections' are left visible, thus making the work a rich site/sight of construction including irregular cuts and pencil marks. 

The narratives are built from the artist's own biography, family artifacts, memories from her past and images of landscapes from traveling through Italy, Switzerland and Germany. All of these, she combines with photographs made in her New York home and her studio. 

Additional Edition:
18"x18" image on 24"x20" sheet
Silver Gelatin
10+2AP

Cornelia Hediger (b.1967) holds a BA Fine Arts and and MA Fine Arts from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Her work can be found in several private collections in the US and Europe. She was a PDN's 30 Awardee in 2009, and has exhibited across the US, Canada and Switzerland. She lives and work in New York. 

Monday, April 11, 2016

AIPAD 2016: JIM NAUGHTEN


White-Handed Gibbon, 2015

Series Title: Animal Kingdom
Number of artworks at AIPAD: 2
Edition: 10 + 2APs
Size: 18" x 23"
Medium: Archival Pigment Print (Stereoscope)
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".Martin Barnes Senior Curator of Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Animal Kingdom has just been released as a monograph by Prestel, with a book-signing at The Photography Show, on Saturday 2:00pm–3:00pm. 



Reclining Iguanadon, 2016

Series Title: Dinosaur Island
Number of artworks at AIPAD: 2
Edition: 10 + 2APs
Size: 12" x 23"
Medium: Archival Pigment Print (Stereoscope)
Year: 2016

A herd of concrete dinosaurs have stood in the improbable habitat of Crystal Palace Park (London) since 1851. The ambitious sculptures cling to the banks of a manmade lake and populate a string of small of islands. Conceived at the cutting edge of Victorian comparative anatomy, they are the earliest known attempt at creating life size dinosaur models . Despite the best efforts of their creator, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, they are less than perfect specimens. With no complete fossils to work from as blueprints, and some mismatches between fossil bone and species, mistakes were unknowingly made. They appear as distant, distorted cousins of the dinosaurs we recognize today.

Those familiar with the South London site get a glimpse of the sculptures at closer proximity than is achievable on a regular Sunday stroll. Naughten required special permission and the use of a small boat to reach his subject. These are photographs with a low centre of gravity. We peer through the riotously colored undergrowth not as a distant observer, but as a fellow creature or as a cautious naturalist might. Facing these concrete monuments to flawed science, one can’t help but question which elements of contemporary science will be rendered naive and inaccurate in the future, and what pictures might be made between these knowledge gaps.

Animal Kingdom and Dinosaur Island will be exhibited at the Klompching Gallery April 20–May 28, 2016. Opening reception: April 21, 6pm–8pm. 

Jim Naughten (b. 1969) is an internationally-exhibited artist, including a solo show at the Imperial War Museum (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). 

Sunday, April 10, 2016

AIPAD 2016: MAX DE ESTEBAN


Defined by the Accident, 2013


Series Title: Proposition Four – Heads Will Roll
Number of artworks at AIPAD: 1
Edition: 5 + 1AP
Size: 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.

"Part of what de Esteban is doing here is unpacking the structural foundations of what a photograph has historically been and how it has functioned, and rebuilding those assumptions from the ground up with a different kind of digital existence in mind. Instead of photography being rooted in documentation, or inspiration, or some definition of “truth”, de Esteban is putting re-interpretation and re-translation at the forefront of the digital now, with a distinct and deliberate emphasis on the re-. What the source files meant in their original or archival context isn’t important – it’s how they have been reassembled to generate an evolved harmony (or dissonance) of new allusions, references, hints, and perceived memories".—Loring Knoblauch, Collector Daily. 


This series is the subject of the monograph, 'Heads Will Roll', published by Hatze Cantz in 2014, and was featured in a solo exhibition at the Klompching Gallery in September 2015. The photographs are currently exhibited at the FotoFest 2016 Biennale in Houston. 

Additional Edition: 25” x 19” image on 28” x 22” sheet, 5+1AP. 

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. Collections holding his work includes the Deutsches Technik Museum (Berlin). He lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

AIPAD 2016: ODETTE ENGLAND


Excavation No. 8, 2015

Series Title: Excavations
Number of artworks at AIPAD: 2
Edition: 1/1 + 1AP
Size: 18.5"x18.5" image on 22.5"x22.5" sheet
Medium: Unique Archival Pigment Print, scratched with sandpaper
Year: 2015

"Preserving family history via photography is like an archeological excavation: it involves the exposure, processing and recording of remains. But to uncover the truth – or at least an interpretation of the ‘apparent truth’ of an image – a ‘hunt’ or ‘dig’ is required.

My project Excavations explores the invisible social space of family storytelling. I make chromogenic color prints (in the darkroom) of family photographs using vintage Kodak film, as well as using snapshots from the album, and then carefully hand-sand them with various types and grades of sandpaper. Using sandpaper means I can blur detail, smooth areas, roughen up patches, and remove people or landscapes altogether…in other words, grind and polish my past, present, future. I make the importance of the snapshot as a memory-based object more beguiling. New stories emerge through interaction, transforming presence into symbolic absence.

The new images challenge how past events are re-presented to us through imagery and how these can influence what we think and believe."–Odette England.



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

Series Title: Develop Before
Number of Artworks at AIPAD: 1
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. 

"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).

Friday, April 8, 2016

AIPAD 2016: CARA BARER



Americas, 2015


Series Title: Maps
Number of artworks at AIPAD: 1
Edition: 9 + 2AP
Size: 36" x 36"
Medium: Archival Pigment Print
Year: 2015

The artist's creative process includes the transformation of outdated, abandoned and obsolete books into coiled, crumpled and sculptural objects. Following this labor-intensive reconfiguration, she photographs them and presents the final artworks as large-scale pigment prints – lush in color, highly detailed and impressive.

With this new series of photographs, Barer expands her attention to include cartography. Using maps as the primary source material, she paints, rips and tears them before binding them into a book form and resulting photograph. As with the status of books, she calls attention to the increasing obsolescence of traditional paper-based maps, in a world easily travelled with GPS.

Cara Barer (b. 1956) lives and works in Houston, Texas. She is a graduate of the Art Institute of Houston, the University of Houston and the Galssell School of Art. Barer has been represented in numerous exhibitions across the US, and has had her work reproduced in several publications, including Art Made From Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved (Chronicle Books, 2013). Collections holding her work include VISA, UCLA Special Collections, Danielle Steel, Bloomingdales, Lehigh University, Nordstrom’s Nationwide, Wells Fargo Bank and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others.

Additional editions available: 48"x48" & 24"x24" | 9+2AP each size

Thursday, April 7, 2016

THE PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW | PRESENTED BY AIPAD

KLOMPCHING GALLERY | BOOTH 116



FEATURING THE FOLLOWING ARTISTS | BOOTH 116

CARA BARER
ODETTE ENGLAND
MAX DE ESTEBAN
CORNELIA HEDIGER
JIM NAUGHTEN
HELEN SEAR
RICHARD TUSCHMAN

PREVIEW OUR BOOTH ON THE GALLERY'S ARTSY PROFILE
AIPAD SHOW AND TICKET INFORMATION HERE