6.22.2016

FREDERIC WEBER: Primary Light and Memento Mori at Klompching Gallery

 Untitled #53, 1994
from Memento Mori series © Frederic Weber
Courtesy Klompching Gallery, NY

 Untitled #77, 1995
from Memento Mori series © Frederic Weber
Courtesy Klompching Gallery, NY

 Untitled #108, 1997
from Primary Light series © Frederic Weber
Courtesy Klompching Gallery, NY

 Untitled #122, 1998
from Primary Light series © Frederic Weber
Courtesy Klompching Gallery, NY

 
Frederic Weber
Primary Light and Memento Mori

Frederic Weber brings to his photographic practice, a visual sensibility that challenges the viewer to determine quite what they’re looking at. On show at the Klompching Gallery are selections from two bodies of work, Memento Mori and Primary Light, both of which draw attention to Weber’s penchant for making photographs that don’t always look like photographs.

Memento Mori is constructed from a combination of images, that the artist has excavated from comic books, magazines, newspapers, television, paintings and other printed matter. He presents images of tightly cropped heads of black and African subjects, presenting them almost as relics of a time past. The photographs are challenging, almost visually overwhelming, and difficult to fix within a specific framework. At once iconic, they echo historical post-mortem imagery, with a time-stamp that is not fixed or even knowable. Made of several layers of different images, the photographs are rich in color and painterly.

The Primary Light series share this painterly quality. Here though, it is the reference to photography’s Pictorialism past, that is most evident. Weber presents torsos and heads that are rendered in soft-focus, with each emerging from a depth of blue so saturated, the color transforms into an abyss, out of which the human forms glow like fire-flies. The ghostly figures seem nostalgic, classical even and partly unknowable. (text via Klompching Gallery)

Klompching Gallery
89 Water Street, Brooklyn
 through July 9, 2016 

CORNELIA HEDIGER : Puppenhaus

Bono in Lago, Italy, 2014 © Cornelia Hediger
Courtesy Klompching Gallery, New York

Bathtub, 2015 © Cornelia Hediger
Courtesy Klompching Gallery, New York

In Memory of Chancie, 2016 © Cornelia Hediger
Courtesy Klompching Gallery, New York

  Lily’s Dream of Fish, 2016 © Cornelia Hediger
Courtesy Klompching Gallery, New York


 Cornelia Hediger: Puppenhaus


Puppenhaus series, by Cornelia Hediger forms the artist’s third exhibition with Klompching Gallery and showcases the artist’s handmade photo-collages. Made between 2014–2016, the series is inspired by the likes of Hannah Höch, John Heartfield and Grete Stern among others. The photographs are constructed out of a combination of pigment and gelatin silver prints, with imagery originating from various sources including the artist’s studio practice, and scans of wallpaper, paint and cardboard. These are combined with recent photographs of travels in Europe, the patriarchal home in Switzerland and other family artifacts.

The hand of the artist is up front and center across the Puppenhaus series—pencil marks, irregular cuts left exposed, paint, hanging string, and individual elements attached in low relief, which together draw attention to the unusual focal planes, angles of view and shifts in scale. All of this combines perfectly with the seemingly whimsical narratives, that take the viewer on a journey through the artist’s fictionalized world. The use of self-portraiture prevails, linking this series back to the previous Doppelgänger work. We see ‘Cornelias’ having tea, balancing cups, acting out in odd domestic spaces and going on journeys. In one piece, reminiscent of the 19th Century Spencer y Cia Chilean Ladies, we see 100 heads—all of the artist—receding back into the distance. Hediger has created theatrical scenes, as if on a stage, images which are extraordinary and which pull you right into their three-dimensional space. (text via Klompching Gallery)

 Klompching Gallery
89 Water Street, Brooklyn
 through July 9, 2016

6.10.2016

LANDSKRONA FOTO FESTIVAL 2016 : Sweden Invitation To Portfolio Review


The Landskrona Foto Festival 2016: Ten days of exhibitions, photo books, seminars, portfolio reviews, artist talks and more. The city of Landskrona, Sweden, founded in 1413, is on the coast of Skåne, between Malmö and Helsingborg, diagonally across the Sound is Copenhagen.



Landskrona Foto Festival again invites photographers to their portfolio review. The primary purpose is the show will lead to offers to the participating photographers to exhibit their pictures at festivals and events around the world. Previous years have seen good results, with participants having been invited to festivals in Derby, Leipzig, Dublin and Athens as a direct result of taking part in the review. Several photo books have also been published.

This year’s reviewers together select the »Best Portfolio«, allowing the winner to take part in the official exhibition program during Landskrona Foto Festival 2017. 2014’s winner was Johan Österholm from Malmö and 2015’s winner was Johan Willner from Stockholm. The selected photographers will be paired with 7 out of the Reviewers listed below for 20 minute sessions:

Reviewers:

Anastasia Lebikhova (RU), Independent curator in Moscow, Russia
Alison Nordstrom (US), Curator at the photo festival in Lodz, Poland
Alnis Stakle (LV), Curator at the photo festival in Riga, Latvia
Andrei Liankevich (BY), Curator at the photo festival in Minsk, Belarus
Laura Toots (EST), Curator at the photo festival in Tallinn, Estonia
Lars Willlumeit (CH), Curator at the photo festival in Krakow, Poland
Christof Tannert (DE), Artistic director at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, German
Andrey Martynov (RU), Curator the photo festival in Novosibirsk, Russia
Holly Roussell (CH), Independent curator and Prix Elysée Coordinator, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
Einar Falur Ingolfsson (IS), Independent curator in Reykjavik, Iceland
Elizabeth Avedon (US), Independent curator and contributor L’Oeil de la Photographie
Michael Weir (UK), Curator at the photo festival in Belfast, Ireland

Date: Saturday 20 August 2016. Time: 10.00–17.00.
Price: SEK 2,500 including VAT (aprox. $300.90 U.S.), entry to the Festival’s International Seminar on 19 August and a weekend festival pass. Deadline for applications: 1 July 2016. You will be notified of whether or not your application is accepted by 15 July. 

Applications should be sent to: portfolioreview@landskronafoto.org

Instructions: Attach your digital portfolio and a detailed text in Swedish or English to your application. About 20 pictures is a reasonable number, to be sent as a pdf. Don’t forget to include your contact details on the first page of the PDF. The winning PDF will be displayed during the festival. It is therefore important that it contains the exact same images that you will be showing to the reviewers.

Nina Grundemark is in charge of the Festival’s Portfolio Review. Ms. Grundemark is the Owner and Managing Director, Grundemark Nilsson Gallery, Berlin and  Stockholm.

The Landskrona Foto Festival Portfolio Review is arranged with support by Iaspis – The Swedish Arts Grants Committeé’s International Programme for Visual Artists.



Artistic Directors Christian Caujolle and Jenny Nordquist

The new Artistic Directors for the 2016 Landskrona Foto Festival are internationally renowned curator and author, Christian Caujolle; and the Landskrona born photographer and gallery owner, Jenny Nordquist. The Landskrona Foto Festival 2016: Ten days of exhibitions, photo books, seminars, portfolio reviews, artist talks and more here.


6.09.2016

KRIS SANFORD: Through The Lens of Desire


 
Flowered Dresses 


Necklace

Intertwined



I met Kris Sanford (above) at Fotofest 2016 and was so impressed by the presentation of her series Through the Lens of Desire. I'm pleased to see her exhibition opens at the Elizabeth Houston Gallery in New York City June 15th and runs through July 24th, 2016. She will also be giving an Artist Talk and Pride Toast June 23rd from 6-8pm at the Gallery.
  
"Through the Lens of Desire creates implied narratives using snapshots from the 1920s-1950s.  Vernacular photographs from that era were created as private keepsakes and the unselfconscious intimacy they depict feels authentic and relatable.  As modern viewers, we witness personal moments that were never intended to be public.  By purposefully selecting images that picture men together and women together I am creating an imaginary queer past.  I am drawn to the subtle points of contact and the spaces between the figures pictured.  Each gesture or distracted glance holds a story, and it is these stories that reflect my own desire and experiences."

"Relationships, real or imagined, are at the center of this work.  Growing up queer, I searched for a history that spoke to me—included me.  In my family history, there were no couples that mirrored my own intimate relationships.  That didn’t keep me from imagining such couples. This project brings a contemporary rereading to old photographs to address sexuality and relationships in a subtle way. My images are works of fiction, where I project my own dreams onto moments from the past." – Kris Sanford.
 
Through the Lens of Desire / Kris Sanford
 June 15-July 24, 2016
Artist Talk and Pride Toast: June 23rd, 6 to 8pm
  
34 East 1st Street
New York, NY