DUMBO Arts Festival

Each year in the Fall,  our neighborhood becomes a frenzy of activity, when the DUMBO Arts Festival presents a broad selection of local, national and international art amid the breathtaking backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline.

Attracting circa 200,000 visitors over 3 days, the festival  features 500 artists from a variety of disciplines, 100 studios, 50 galleries and stages and 100 programming partners. The festival is upon us; opening tomorrow.

Friday: 6pm—9pm

Saturday: 12pm—8pm

Sunday: 12pm—6pm

As with previous years, Klompching Gallery will be open throughout the festival. We look forward to seeing you over the course of this weekend and please consider us for the AT&T Audience Award.

Cornelia Hediger's DOPPELGANGER

As art dealers, working with a carefully selected stable of artists, we are often asked how it is that we find our artists and what it is that we are looking for?

05.18.09 Set 1 from the Doppelgänger II series. © 2010 Cornelia Hediger

First and foremost, we respond to that intangible 'spark'. And ... every now and again, you come across work that simply takes your breath away. This is exactly what we experienced when we first set eyes on the work of Cornelia Hediger in the Spring of 2008 at the Center for Photography at Woodstock.

07.10.09 from the Doppelgänger II series. © 2010 Cornelia Hediger

We could not pull ourselves away from the photographs that formed her first Doppelgänger series—in which she explores an internal dialogue and struggle between the conscious and the unconscious. The narratives are complex, expressed through simple assemblage and are photographed to exploit and exaggerate spatiality in the photograph. Each frame is a complete and unadulterated full-frame photograph, lush in color, exquisitely staged and in which Cornelia is both photographer and performer. They are executed to perfection, piercing our appreciation for photography on every level; visceral and intellectual.

 11.17.08 from the Doppelgänger II series. © 2010 Cornelia Hediger

We remember being completely and utterly overwhelmed by them. By a stroke of luck, we had the good fortune to meet Cornelia within hours of first seeing her work—we conversed at length about her photographs and overall artistic practice. There was a mutual synergy and, following a wonderfully long portfolio viewing, we started representing her a week later. In September of the same year, we opened the  2008/2009 gallery season with the very same images that mesmerized us.

In our minds, she is a huge talent, a rare artist who is completely and utterly committed to her creative practice; with a single vision that is uncompromising to the point of being obsessed.

05.29.10 Set 2 from the Doppelgänger II series. © 2010 Cornelia Hediger 

 Three years on and we are now exhibiting Doppelgänger II, Cornelia's second solo show with the gallery and urge our readers in New York to visit the gallery and view the work.

Elaine Duigenan's MICRO MUNDI

During June—August 2010, we exhibited a new series of photographs by our gallery artist, Elaine Duigenan, entitled Micro Mundi. In this intimate series of images, she has photographed the arterial wanderings of snails, as they graze upon algae, leaving behind an aftermath of claw-like patterns—caused by the rasping action of the snail’s spiky tongue. 

Orbis Atlantis from the Micro Mundi series. © 2010 Elaine Duigenan

On a micro level, these rambling, chaotic and protracted patterns, attest to a seemingly plodding yet vigorous life-form. On a macro level, they’re dendritic appearance resemble earth’s estuaries as viewed from far above. By presenting the images within a circular frame, these stunning monochromatic photographs are transformed into floating planets, as we would imagine them to be on a cosmic scale. The planetary metaphor is further enhanced with titles that refer to cartographic terms of old, that placed Earth in a philosophical and religious setting.

Prior to their completion and exhibition, an image from Micro Mundi was launched into space on Shuttle Atlantis on November 16th 2009.

This came about as a collaboration with Astronaut Leland Melvin, who was so taken with the ideas in the work, that he offered to carry an image on the mission and photograph it in a window of The International Space Station. Below is Elaine Duigenan's photograph, Orbis Atlantis, in the The Kibo Lab and photographed by Leland Melvin to connect with the Earth (see the Amazon River).

Mission STS-129. 171 orbits round the Earth, 17,500 mph, distance 4,490,138 miles. Image © 2009 Leland Melvin/NASA.

As we write, Space Shuttle Atlantis is completing its final mission. You can own both a small piece of its illustrious legacy and an exquisite photograph by a talented artist.  Orbis Atlantis is available for purchase through the gallery in two editions. 

14" diameter, 24"x20" sheet (Edition of 5, 2 AP's), Availability: 2 & 1 AP
18.5" diameter, 32"x24" sheet (Edition of 2, 1AP), Availability: 2 & 1 AP
Medium: Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Cotton Rag

 A copy of the above certificate accompanies each edition of Orbis Atlantis.