Friday, April 30, 2010

Continental Picture Show Part II - Iowa Bird Story - Alec Soth

From the New York Times this morning.

The second part of the Continental Picture Show, photographed in Des Moines IA.  Alec Soth is a Minneapolis based photographer.

Enjoy the video here.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Catherine Edelman Gallery- Michael Kenna Venice/China/Japan/Egypt/Etc.

From the Catherine Edelman Gallery
May 7- July 10, 2010



Michael Kenna is undoubtedly one of the most exhibited and collected photographers working today. With more than 35 monographs dedicated to his work, Kenna has proven time and again that his vision knows no boundaries. Whether working in his native England, the Giza pyramids in Cairo, the snow covered landscape in Hokkaido, or the shores of France, Kenna seeks places of solitude which speak volumes about humanity and the haunting beauty found in nature.

His newest monograph, Venezia, is being released to coincide with a retrospective of his work at Palazzo Magnani Museum (Reggio Emilia, Italy) this Spring, and features more than 30 years of work he has done in the region. The resulting images are both romantic and eerie, two attributes often associated with Venice. From a fog-lined pier, to unoccupied gondolas waiting in the harbor, to a foot bridge shimmering in street lights, Kenna captures the mystique often associated with one of the worlds most beloved places.

Alongside images from Venice, our current show will feature photographs from Japan, the Huangshan Mountains in China, the pyramids in Cairo, mussel and oyster beds in the Chausey Islands and rock formations in Punta Brava. Whether photographing in his hometown of Seattle or halfway around the world, Michael Kenna has developed a signature style this is un-mistakenly his own. Void of people, he invites viewers to meander with him through places that are both remote and heavily trafficked, reminding us of the beauty we tend to over look.


The Image below is from a past show.

Teotihuacan, Study 2, Mexico, 2006

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

PhotoMidwest - Robert and Shana Parkeharrison - Lecture

From PhotoMidwest:

October 17th, 7:00 P.M.
Location TBA

Robert and Shana Parkeharrison will be giving a lecture at Photomidwest this fall, I would recommend the drive to Madison Wisconsin to have a chance to hear these photographers speak.



About the ParkeHarrisons:

"The husband and wife team of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison have received international recognition for their fine art images that poetically explore human influences on the environment. The photographs embody aspects of theatre, sculpture, painting and photography. The center of their elaborate constructed scenes of fabricated machinery and primitive contraptions is Everyman, a solitary figure dressed in a simple suit, who interacts with the earth's landscape. Everyman patches holes in the sky, creates rain machines, uses giant needles to mend the earth, and listens to the earth's needs. In addition to building the objects featured in image, their process to create finished prints utilizes paper negatives, photo montage and hand-painting techniques.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the ParkeHarrison's unique genre of photography has been featured in over 18 solo exhibitions and more than 30 group exhibits world-wide, including Japan, Canada, Italy and Ireland. In 2000, the monograph of their work, The Architect's Brother was named one of the 10 Best Photography Books of the Year by the New York Times. Listen to the Earth, a handbound book with 11 platinum prints was created in 2003, and most recently a collection of color work, counterpoint has been published. Their allegorical works can be found in numerous collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts-Houston, the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian and the George Eastman House.

The ParkeHarrisons have degrees in fine art from Missouri universities, and Robert currently teaches at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts."

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Chicago Cultural Center - Jon Fjortoft: Photographs - Current Exhibition

From the Chicago Cultural Center:
Dates: 4/3/2010 - 6/27/2010


Gallery Talk, Thursday June 3rd


Location:
Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington St, Michigan Avenue Galleries
Chicago, IL 60602






"This exhibition looks at two bodies of work by Jon Fjortoft, a largely self-taught, Chicago-based photographer.


First, his landscape portraits of manufacturing plants in the suburbs show pared down compositions and strange landscapes that emphasize the surreal quality of these relics. These are accompanied by Fjortoft’s “street photographs” that use his strong sense of formal composition to reveal keen observations of people in downtown Chicago."

Monday, April 19, 2010

Schneider Gallery- Guillermo Srodek-Hart & Kevin Malella

From Schneider Gallery
March 5 - May 8, 2010

The Schneider Gallery is pleased to present the work of two young artists, Guillermo Srodek-Hart and Kevin Malella, who have recently earned their Masters of Fine Arts, and have been actively working and exhibiting. These promising artists are interested in places, though for different reason and with different result.

Srodek-Hart is drawn to collection and accumulation; at times the assemblage is a shop, and at others a roadside or in-home shrines. All his captured scenes are from rural Argentina. He brings us images of a rustic carpenter’s shop, a cobbler’s workbench under a mountain of worn soles, a butcher shop with meat on hooks and displayed raw on countertops. The shrines range from tidy to cluttered. Those on the roadside are overrun with offerings. Faith, superstition, or legend the stories that accompany these seemingly spontaneous collections give insight into the popular culture of the Argentineans.

Malella’s Constructed Landscapes unveil the relationship between industry and landscape. A factory disrupts a wetland scene, a billowing smoke stack breaks clear blue sky, a nuclear cooling tower towers over a field of golden wheat. Malella draws from the documentary tradition, but integrates frames and vantage of multiple shots into a single panoramic view. His technique heightens the intersection of artificial and organic. The series title, Constructed Landscape, is clever, as it points reference to both the means of production and the intrusion of man on nature.



Kevin Malella: A Constructed Landscape


Sunday, April 18, 2010

Gage Gallery- Eugene Richards: A Procession of Them: The Plight of the Mentally Disabled

From the Gage Gallery
February 11-May 14, 2010

"In some countries, they call them the "abandonados," the abandoned ones. They're the impoverished mentally ill and mentally disabled patients being warehoused in psychiatric asylums that are more run-down, more uncaring than the most brutal American prisons. Confined in cage-like cells, tied to beds soiled with human waste, medicated to the point of senselessness, or wandering naked in unheated and garage-like wards, they live in what can only be called the shadows, their plight unseen and too easily ignored by the rest of the human family. Working first as a journalist, later as a volunteer for the human rights organization Mental Disability Rights International, photographer Eugene Richards gained access to psychiatric institutions in Mexico, Argentina, Armenia, Hungary, Paraguay, and Kosovo. His wrenchingly intimate images reveal the often inhumane treatment suffered by the mentally disabled."

Eugene Richards

Saturday, April 17, 2010

NEXT 2010 - Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art

2010 Show Hours
Friday, April 30: 11am - 7pm
Saturday, May 1: 11am - 7pm
Sunday, May 2: 11am - 6pm
Monday, May 3: 11am - 4pm

Location: Alongside Art Chicago at the Merchandise Mart (222 West Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, IL)

"More than an art fair, NEXT is a showcase for the world’s talents and an adventure in cutting-edge culture. An opportunity to redefine the relationship between art and its public, NEXT is a portal to seeing contemporary art in new, innovative, eye-opening ways. NEXT will include works from both commercial and non-commercial arts organizations--galleries, project spaces, art publications and key private contemporary collections from around the world."

 Tickets can be purchased online here.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Chicago Photography Collective - In the Real World

From Chicago Photography Collective
April 8, 2010-May 2, 2010
11:30am-5:30pm Tues-Sun
Chicago Loop Alliance: Pop-Up Art Loop
29 E. Madison St.
Chicago


The Chicago Photography Collective, in conjunction with the Chicago Loop Alliance and
Pop-Up Art Chicago is featuring new work by 2 of its photographers.


The show is called: “In the Real World” and will feature the works of Ron Seymour and Karen Hoyt along with works by many of the Collective’s members.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Art Institute of Chicago - William Eggleston: Democratic Camera - Current Exhibition

From the Art Institute of Chicago:


February 27 - May 23, 2010
Galleries 182-184, 188, Modern Wing


"One of the most influential American artists, William Eggleston changed the history of color photography. This exhibition—the artist’s first retrospective in the United States—brings together Eggleston’s famous color photographs of the American South with lesser-known works, such as his early black-and-white prints and provocative video recordings."


"A key figure of the last half-century, Eggleston is often credited for singlehandedly ushering in the era of color art photography. His motivation was simple and decidedly everyday: “I had wanted to see a lot of things in color because the world is in color.” His achievement is patently more extraordinary—transforming ordinary moments into indelible images."


William Eggleston, Untitled, from Los Alamos


"This exhibition, which fills the Modern Wing’s Abbott Galleries and Carolyn S. and Matthew Bucksbaum Gallery, demonstrates Eggleston’s democratic approach to his photographic subjects in both color and black-and-white. On display are Eggleston’s remarkable black-and-white images from the early 1960s and his little-seen recording of 1970s Memphis nightlife, Stranded in Canton. These works only amplify his achievement in bringing a detailed sensitivity to his iconic color photographs—telling portrayals of American culture, including a freezer stuffed with food, Elvis’s Graceland, and a supermarket clerk corralling grocery carts in the afternoon sunlight."

Museum of Contemporary Photography - VIDEO SCREENING AND DISCUSSION: BEATE GEISSLER AND OLIVER SANN


From the Museum of Contemporary Photography
April 21, 2010 6pm
Hokin Auditorium
623 S. Wabash

Join exhibiting artists Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann as they comment on and screen examples of their video work, including Shooter (2000), and Fuck the War (2007).

the real estate #14, #15, #16, 17, 2009

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Anne Loukes Gallery- Chris Honeysett: Inside/Out - Current Exhibition

From the Anne Loukes Gallery
Feb 27 - April 30, 2010

Black and White Photography from Chris Honeysett.


Chris Honeysett- Receding Peaks

MoCP - Geissler/Sann: The Real Estate - Current Exhibition

From the Museum of Contemporary Photography:
April 9 - May 23, 2010


the real estate #54, #55, #56, 2009


"When the artists Beate Geissler (German, b.1970) and Oliver Sann (German, b. 1968) moved to Chicago from Germany in early 2008, the current economic crisis was well under way. The percentage of the nation’s homes that were vacant and for sale or rent was at historic highs. Foreclosure rates were rising, while home prices, which had begun to fall in 2006, continued to plummet. Nationwide, the number of homes that have been foreclosed over the past four years is estimated at more than six million. Many of these homes remain empty; most of them represent a family or person that has been displaced."


the real estate #41, #42, 2009


"In this disheartening environment the Geisser/Sann family began to search for a place to live in Chicago. Out of necessity they spent their days consumed by real estate, surrounded by evidence of the housing crisis. Eventually they felt a need to react to the situation and began photographing foreclosed properties all over Chicago, ranging from homes worth a few thousand dollars to 3.5 million–dollar mansions. This endeavor resulted in their photographic work the real estate (2008– 09), a series of sixty color photographs of vacated interior spaces. Geissler and Sann did not set out to create a social documentary project. Instead, they were interested in probing the concepts of home and ownership. Feeling somewhat displaced themselves as new arrivals to the United States, they began to reflect more deeply on what it means to be uprooted, and to explore the link between familiarity and feeling at home."

MoCP - Panel Discussion: Planning for Crisis, Responding to Trauma

From the Museum of Contemporary Photography:
April 15th, 2010 : 6:00 P.M.




"This panel will discuss how we plan for and cope with traumatic events that are beyond our control as it relates to Sarah Pickering’s series Incident Control. Panelists include David Gervino, Preparedness Manager and Rebecca Streifler, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Director of Health and International Services for the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago, and Matthew McNiel, Case Management Services Coordinator for Outreach Community Ministries Chicago. Moderated by Corinne Rose, MoCP Manager of Education."

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

MoCP - Sarah Pickering, Incident Control - Current Exhibition

From the Museum of Contemporary Photography:
April 9th - June 20th, 2010


"The Museum of Contemporary Photography is proud to present a monographic exhibition featuring the work of British artist Sarah Pickering. While appearing to exist between reality and illusion, Pickering’s images are actually documents of simulation. The exhibition will present a total of 36 photographs from four recent series of Pickering’s work, spanning from 2002 to the present: Explosions, Fire Scene, Incident, and Public Order."

Land Mine, 2005

"Sarah Pickering’s photographs disturb our sense of security and illuminate the ways in which we cope with traumatic events that are beyond our control. Her pictures depict environments and events crafted specifically for simulated training to prepare police officers, firefighters, and soldiers for calamities ranging from fire and civil unrest to terrorism and war. By exposing the absurdity and controlled nature of these environments, Pickering’s images reveal our predilection to deflect fear by trying to anticipate and plan for it—and our tendency to create a story to help us process it."


Napalm, 2005


River Way Road Block, 2004

The Art Institute of Chicago - In the Vernacular - Curator Talk

From the Art Institute of Chicago

4/28, 12-12:30 p.m.
Meet in Gallery 100
Free with admission

Join curatorial staff on a guided walk through this special exhibition.

Overview:

"Vernacular photographs—those countless ordinary and utilitarian pictures made for souvenir postcards, government archives, police case files, pin-up posters, networking Web sites, and the pages of magazines, newspapers, or family albums—have been both the inspiration for and the antithesis of fine-art photography for over a century. In their struggle to gain legitimacy in the art world, fine-art photographers at the turn of the 20th century endeavored to distance their work from the amateur, commonplace, and practical photographs that had become so familiar in everyday experience.

This exhibition presents the work of artists who chose instead to strategically use photography’s everyday forms as a source of inspiration, consciously appropriating, reworking, and interrogating the aesthetics, content, and means of distribution associated with vernacular photography. Photographs by Walker Evans, Andy Warhol, Lee Friedlander, Cindy Sherman, Martin Parr, Nikki S. Lee, and others represented in the Art Institute’s permanent collection challenge us to reevaluate the impact, value, and status of the photographs we encounter in our daily lives. These images persuade us to consider the ways in which photographs function as significant bearers of complex meaning, rather than mere descriptions or reflections of the world, whether they grace the walls of a museum, the pages of a magazine, the files in a cabinet, or a living room mantel."

The Art Institute of Chicago - Chicago: Lost and Found - Exhibition Opening


April 14–June 14, 2010
Ryerson Library
Overview:

"The architectural ingenuity produced in Chicago has led many to refer to it as the cradle of modern architecture. However, as tastes evolved, technologies shifted, and appeals for progress rang loud, we lost many pieces of greatness that embodied Chicago’s history and architectural heritage. With Chicago: Lost and Found, we pay tribute to some of our beloved city’s lost structures—some well-known icons, but mostly lesser-known gems—and celebrate a handful of reused buildings. This exhibition features an array of photographs, building brochures, floor-plans, and other unique documents that represent the vast archival collection found at the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries. "