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Kota EzawaKavanaugh Hearings

2024

acrylic pigment print on wood, 39-3/4 x 59-7/8 x 1 inches (overall) [101 x 152.1 x 2.5 cm], edition of 3

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At the heart of the exhibition are two new works: a digital animation and related print on wood that depict then-California Senator Kamala Harris questioning Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Other highlights include Hand Vote, an 8-foot sculpture celebrating the practice of democracy, and two recent lightboxes portraying the arrival of a cruise ship under the Golden Gate Bridge in 2020, carrying some of the first known cases of COVID-19 into the United States.

In his new animation Ezawa focuses on an exchange from 2018 in which Harris asks Kavanaugh if he knows of any laws that govern the male body. Ezawa renders the C-SPAN video into flattened, simplified shapes, giving the subjects a mask-like appearance emphasizing the theatrical quality of the event. The significance of the moment has shifted over time, as Kavanaugh went on to help overturn Roe v. Wade. Ezawa began the works shortly before President Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, and the impact of the exchange continues to evolve.

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Kota EzawaHand Vote

2024 (installation view)

acrylic pigment print on wood, 96 x 120 x 48 inches (overall installed) [243.8 x 304.8 x 121.9 cm], edition of 2

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Anchoring the show with its oversize presence, Hand Vote pictures more than a dozen men and women with their hands raised in an act of civic involvement. The original tabletop-sized sculpture was created in 2008, in the runup to an earlier presidential election. Since then, larger versions of the piece have been featured in outdoor public art installations in Vancouver and Washington D.C. For the Fraenkel Gallery exhibition, Ezawa has created a version in a new scale.

Two lightboxes depict the arrival of the Grand Princess cruise ship into the picturesque landscape of the San Francisco Bay in March 2020. They evoke the anxiety and alienation that marked the coming of a global pandemic. In one, the huge ship attracts a small crowd, who watch as it enters the Bay; in the other, on view for the first time, the ship’s passengers wave from their balconies. Images of the ship were viewed around the world, circulating through the media as the virus spread.

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Kota EzawaGrand Princess

2023

transparency in lightbox, 40 x 60 inches (overall) [101.6 x 152.4 cm], edition of 5

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Kota EzawaHand Vote

2024

acrylic pigment print on wood, 96 x 120 x 48 inches (overall installed) [243.8 x 304.8 x 121.9 cm], edition of 2

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Hand Vote pictures more than a dozen men and women with their hands raised in an act of civic involvement. The piece has existed in several iterations since Ezawa created the earliest 11-inch tall version of the sculpture in 2008, in the runup to that year’s historic presidential election. Produced over the course of more than 15 years, each version of the piece has come with its own associations, inevitably influenced by the time and place it was shown.

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Created in a new scale for the Fraenkel Gallery exhibition, the piece is presented as part of an exhibition that opens days before another historic presidential election, in which the act of voting has itself become a contentious political issue. To the artist, at its core, the work depicts the machinations of democracy. A further significance of the piece may emerge after the election—as Ezawa has noted, “The meaning always comes afterwards.”

In the new digital animation I’ll repeat the question, 2024, Ezawa spotlights an exchange from 2018 in which then-Senator Kamala Harris asks Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh if he knows of any laws that govern the male body. Ezawa renders the C-SPAN video into flattened, simplified shapes, giving the subjects a mask-like appearance emphasizing the theatrical quality of the event. The significance of the moment has shifted over time, as Kavanaugh went on to help overturn Roe v. Wade. Ezawa began the work shortly before President Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, and the impact of the exchange continues to evolve after Harris lost the election for the presidency.

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Kota EzawaKavanaugh Hearings

2024

acrylic pigment print on wood, 39-3/4 x 59-7/8 x 1 inches (overall) [101 x 152.1 x 2.5 cm], edition of 3

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In addition to animation, Ezawa renders Kavanaugh Hearings as an acrylic pigment print on plywood. Ezawa is interested in events that stir strong emotions, enabling him to meditate on the chosen imagery and center the same subject across different modes of presentation, including paper collages and lightboxes. On working with varied techniques, Ezawa states “Whenever you use a new material, everything can go wrong, but you have to open yourself up.”

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Kota EzawaGrand Princess

2024 (detail)

transparency in lightbox, 40 x 60 inches (overall) [101.6 x 152.4 cm], edition of 5

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Kota EzawaGrand Princess

2024

transparency in lightbox, 40 x 60 inches (overall) [101.6 x 152.4 cm], edition of 5

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Kota EzawaGrand Princess

2023

transparency in lightbox, 40 x 60 inches (overall) [101.6 x 152.4 cm], edition of 5

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In the other lightbox, the huge ship attracts a small crowd, who watch as it enters the Bay. Causing a traffic jam on the Bay Bridge as people stopped to take its picture, the Grand Princess became, as Ezawa puts it, “an icon for the virus, which was invisible.” Images of the ship were viewed around the world, circulating through the media as news of the pandemic spread.

The post Kota Ezawa appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

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John WatersReconstructed Lassie

2012

chromogenic print, 30 x 20 inches (image) [76.2 x 50.8 cm], edition of 5

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The monster we’ve come to know as Frankenstein was a vegetarian. He is also nameless, though his creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, refers to him as “being,” “fiend,” and “daemon.” Over the course of two centuries—the book was first published anonymously in 1818—and in the public imagination, the patient has taken the doctor’s name, and the word “Frankenstein” has been fashioned into a noun, verb, and adjective to signal a uniquely grotesque form of cobbled-togetherness.

The book—its story, subjects, and all around “It’s Alive!” flavor (a line taken from the 1931 Boris Karloff film, not the book)—is often read as a parable about the dangers of unchecked ambition, invention, and so-called progress, and its warning has been applied to the atomic age, climate change, the any-day-now takeover of artificial intelligence, and much more. It’s also a story about fear—a fear of the unknown, and a fear of the real and perceived monsters among and within us. In 2024, the book and its themes remain freakishly relevant, legible through countless lenses and applicable to enumerable blood-curdling prospects.

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Danny McDonaldThe Viewing

2022

Fraenkenstein action figures (plastic, cloth, paint), pedestal, 52-1/4 x 33 x 18-1/2 (overall) [132.7 x 83.8 x 47 cm]

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A proper exhibition tackling the book and the ways in which “Frankenstein” moves through popular culture would require a museum with the staff and resources of the Louvre. This project should therefore be considered entirely improper and radically incomplete, populated by artworks that speak in varied ways to the book’s varied concerns. The initial concept for Fraenkenstein was proposed by Stein to Fraenkel in the spring of 2023. Fraenkel said yes on the spot, and Fraenkenstein is the malfunctioning birthchild of their curiously overlapping sensibilities.

The exhibition features works by Diane Arbus, Hans Bellmer, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Bruce Conner, Kota Ezawa, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Brett Goodroad, Katy Grannan, Martine Gutierrez, Whitney Hubbs, Peter Hujar, George Kuchar, Justine Kurland, Christian Marclay, Danny McDonald, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, BJ Newton, B. Ingrid Olson, Woody De Othello, Hiroshi Sugimoto, John Waters, Lindsey White, and others.

The post Fraenkenstein appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

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Peter HujarThek Working on the Tomb Figure

1967

pigment print by Gary Schneider, 16 x 20 inches (sheet) [40.6 x 50.8 cm], edition of 10

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Jeffrey Fraenkel: I would say this project felt fully born from the moment Jordan first proposed it. We both knew the exhibition would be wide ranging and would encompass work in a variety of media. And of course there were two scientists working on this project instead of the single Dr. Frankenstein in the book – the perfect vehicle to meld our sensibilities. 

Jordan Stein: And to echo the nature of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, it was intuitive to assemble the show from disparate and available parts. The doctor is single-minded in his quest, and it’s clear that he will find a way to animate life. We knew it would come alive. There were certain images and artists that we sent back and forth, and it eventually reached a kind of perfectly manic equilibrium.

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Diane Arbus“Frankenstein’s Daughter” [close up with shoulders] 1958

gelatin silver print / printed by Diane Arbus, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]

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JF: My early tagline for the exhibition was “art that’ll scare the shit out of you,” but that evolved over time. Now fear is only one aspect of the show.

The first image I sent you was a Diane Arbus photograph made inside a movie theater in 1958. The theater was screening Frankenstein’s Daughter, and Arbus is, I think, recognizing the film’s tawdry scariness that is not really scary. Well, maybe it’s a little scary, but she pokes a hole through that with the photograph.

JS: The scariest stuff in our culture becomes a Halloween costume; Frankenstein is popular on October 31st in every neighborhood in this country. Danny McDonald’s piece, which includes more than a dozen different Frankenstein dolls and action figures, is called The Viewing; the largest one is dead and all the other Frankensteins are mourning its loss. Frankenstein is dead! Long live Frankenstein! There’s something funny and inexhaustible about Mary Shelley’s creation. Arbus certainly picked up on that.

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Danny McDonaldThe Viewing

2022

Fraenkenstein action figures (plastic, cloth, paint), pedestal, 52-1/4 x 33 x 18-1/2 (overall) [132.7 x 83.8 x 47 cm]

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JF: I had forgotten how meta the novel is. It is a story within a story, which is all the more astonishing when you realize Mary Shelley was only 19 when she wrote Frankenstein. The diversity of works selected for the show really do address a wide range of the book’s themes.

JS: Right. And it makes good sense to host the show at Fraenkel as the novel was written right alongside the invention of photography – they emerged just a few years apart. The fact that Dr. Frankenstein sets out to understand the otherwise invisible laws of nature is of a piece with the origins of photographic technology.

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Bruce ConnerTHE LATE NIGHT MOVIE ON TV: JUNE 10, 1978 @1:20-1:27 A.M.: STERNS MOTEL IN VENICE, CA, NEG.#10A

1978

gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm], edition of 3

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Bruce ConnerTHE LATE NIGHT MOVIE ON TV: JUNE 10, 1978 @1:20-1:27 A.M.: STERNS MOTEL IN VENICE, CA, NEG.#11A

1978

gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm], edition of 3

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JF: For me, maybe the central piece in the show is John Waters’s altered portrait of Lassie after cosmetic surgery, to make her appear younger. I mean, it’s hard for an old broad of a collie to get work in Hollywood these days, right? John’s piece strikes me as the ultimate Hollywood horror story about the fear of aging, told in the darkly comic voice that’s uniquely his.

JS: The Hiroshi Sugimoto is a perfect fit because the doctor talks about how his studies of electricity led to the creation of his monster. And the monster, of course, has a mind of its own – there it is looking back at you in these amazing Bruce Conner pictures. You know, you’re just trying to watch a little TV before nodding off, and BOOM – it’s got eyes on you. Similarly in Richard Misrach’s image of the shot-up Andy Warhol ad, there’s the Terminator-esque intersection of the human and the post-human. All in the name of hair spray!

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Hiroshi SugimotoLightning Fields 222

2009

gelatin silver print, 71-3/4 x 60 inches (framed) [182.3 x 152.4 cm], edition of 5

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Richard MisrachPlayboy #038 (Andy Warhol)

1990

pigment print, 29 x 25 inches (framed) [73.7 x 63.5 cm]

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JF: The Misrach is an unexpected image from a body of work made almost 35 years ago. It’s a straightforward photograph of a copy of Playboy magazine Richard found in the desert, a copy that had been used for target practice. As Richard looked through the magazine, he was horrified by the meanings that had been created by the bullet holes. The shot-through Playboy had become a new type of Duchampian found object.

JS: An art studio is in some ways like a laboratory, and there’s a relationship between artistic production and the activation of inanimate materials. In the Peter Hujar and Whitney Hubbs works, an art studio is clearly a place where unpredictable experiments are sanctioned and protected. In both works, the artist becomes the subject–similarly with Martine Gutierrez’s work. It’s hard to tell where the artist and subject stop and start, and it addresses the extraordinary alchemy that can happen in the studio and in an artist’s imagination.

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Whitney HubbsFunny Ha Ha #4

2022

chromogenic prints & archival clear tape on glass mirror, 36 x 60 inches (overall) [91.4 x 152.4 cm]

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Martine GutierrezPlastics, Brigitte

2020

chromogenic print, 24 × 17 inches (framed) [61 × 43.2 cm], edition of 8

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JS: Dr. Frankenstein retreats from his family and from the broader world in an effort to make sense of his secret passion. I know a lot of artists like that. The doctor’s beating a path to do things that have never been done and to materialize visions that have never been seen. BJ Newton was a California artist who was in and out of correctional facilities, painting unearthly visions he conjured from the confines of a prison cell. There’s a play between portraiture, self-portraiture, landscape, and religious iconography that explores a world that is both here and beyond.

JF: Newton’s painting in the show seems end-of-the worldish, fiery, apocalyptic.

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B.J. NewtonOne Sow, One Reap

1969

oil on canvas, 21-1/4 x 34 inches (framed) [53.97 x 86.36 cm]

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JS: The doctor sets out to animate life, but some bits of human creation are too micro for him to construct. So he makes an oversized version of a person: it’s like the opposite of making a model. It gets bigger, like the kind of enormous animal foot in Brett Goodroad’s painting The Club.

JF: In the Goodroad, the very way it’s painted feels like a roiling of all the energies coming together in Dr. Frankenstein’s studio. If they could be depicted, they would look like this.

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Brett GoodroadThe Club

2015

watercolor on paper stretched over canvas, 24-1-2 x 35-1/2 inches [62.2 x 90.2 cm]

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JS: There are serious warnings in this book. I wrote down artificial intelligence a dozen times as I was reading this thing.

JF: Yeah. It feels as if Mary Shelley directly anticipated the potential consequences of artificial intelligence. What we created may soon be out to destroy us.

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Janet Cardiff & George Bures MillerGenie

2023

mixed media with electronics, magnet, 11 x 10 x 5 inches (overall) [27.9 x 25.4 x 12.7 cm]

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JS: It’s pretty uncanny. The monster finds a stack of books outside his hovel, and he begins to understand the complexity of the world by reading them. He’s learning through the construction of a data set.

JF: In a way, Christian Marclay’s works feel as if they are screaming with a warning to wake up, pay attention and save ourselves before it’s too late. Christian’s works were all made during the shutdown and convey that existential undercurrent of anxiety we felt then and continue to feel now.

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Christian MarclayUntitled (Cut Throat)

2020

comic book and magazine cutouts on paper, 19 x 18-1/2 inches (framed) [48.3 x 47 cm]

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JS: There’s an annotated version of Frankenstein for engineers and scientists published by MIT, but there’s no annotated Frankenstein for artists. It’d be my hope that maybe this exhibition kicks up some ideas around just how powerful and compelling artists’ visions have been, and will continue to be.

JF: One thing is for sure, if Mary Shelley came to see this show, she would love it.

JS: Mm-Hmm. It might even scare the shit out of her.

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Kota EzawaThe Scream

2016

transparency in lightbox, 33-3/4 X 26-3/4 inches (overall) [83.8 x 67.9 cm], edition of 5

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The post Fraenkenstein appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

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Richard MisrachNancy Holt, Sun Tunnels #26

1988

pigment print, 61 x 76-3/4 inches (framed) [151.1 x 190.5 cm], edition of 3

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Richard Misrach’s series Desert Canto XL – Art in the West examines the way artists work in the American desert. His subjects included Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, the 1973-1976 Land Art project she created in Utah’s Great Basin. Misrach’s photographs of the piece were featured in Blind Spot Folios 001: Nancy Holt & Richard Misrach, a book pairing Misrach’s photographs from the site with material from Holt’s archive, including photo studies and a self-interview. ⁠

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Robert AdamsColorado Springs, Colorado

1968-71

gelatin silver print, 13 x 11 inches (mount) [33 x 27.9 cm]

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Roberts Adams’s​ view of a Colorado Springs gas station ​compares the glow of the evening sky with the electric light illuminating the gas pump. In the recent monograph American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams, Sarah Greenough ​writes about such juxtapositions​ in Adams’s work. 

“​Drawing on insights Hopper had given him into the ‘poignancy of light,’ [Adams] also began to savor the cool light of dusk​… Probing the liaison between the natural and the artificial, he explored the contrast between this evocative, tender light of dusk with its fleeting radiance and the harsh but still haunting glow of neon signs and streetlights that punctuated the darkness for hours on end​,”​ Greenough​ notes.

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Hiroshi SugimotoBrush Impression 0883 (Fire)

2023

gelatin silver print, 48-3/8 x 41 inches (framed) [122.9 x 104.1 cm], unique

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To create the one-of-a-kind calligraphic photographs in his Brush Impression series, Hiroshi Sugimoto paints Japanese characters onto light sensitive paper using photographic chemicals. Each unique piece records the movement of his brush across the surface of the paper, producing gestural shapes as well as splashes, bubbles, and traces of bristles. The kanji characters he selects often represent words for elemental forces—here he paints the character for fire. The meaning of each word is heightened and reinforced by the expressive qualities of each piece.

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Diane Arbus42nd Street movie theater audience, N.Y.C. 1958

gelatin silver print / printed by Diane Arbus, 11 x 13-3/4 inches (mount) [27.9 x 34.9 cm]

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As a lifelong moviegoer, Diane Arbus was attuned to the divergent ways a viewer responded to a photograph and a film. By turning her camera to the spectators of New York’s movie houses, marquee movie posters, and screened dramas, Arbus captured moments where people were able to escape reality, engaging with the grander fantasies presented to them on screen.

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Elisheva BiernoffBeyond Our

2023

three acrylic paintings on wood, one painted both sides; pine frame, pushpins, 63-1/4 x 46-1/4 x 4-1/2 inches (overall) [160.7 x 117.5 x 11.4 cm]

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Elisheva Biernoff’s meticulously painted reproductions of found photographs are often small enough to fit into the palm of a hand. In Beyond Our, her recreation expands to encompass a photograph and a larger poster, as well as the wood-paneled wall on which they are displayed, all rendered in highly detailed acrylic. Together, the objects suggest questions about the mysteries that lie beyond the frame.

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Sophie CallePortrait de Marie-Thérèse

2022

pigment print, 57-1/2 x 57-1/2 inches (framed) [146 x 146 cm], edition of 2

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Sophie CalleBaigneuse ouvrant une cabine

2022

pigment print, 47-1/4 x 38-1/4 inches (framed) [120 x 97.2 cm], edition of 2

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Sophie CallePortrait de Jacques Prévert

2022

pigment print, 38-3/4 x 26-1/4 inches (framed) [98.4 x 66.7 cm], edition of 2

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As part of a 2023 exhibition at the Musée National Picasso-Paris commemorating the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, Sophie Calle presented photographs of Picasso’s paintings kept covered by paper and linens during lockdown. Shown in tandem with Calle’s own work and possessions, which filled three floors of the museum, her photographs reckon with Picasso’s legacy and memory.

In The Simpson Verdict, Kota Ezawa animates original footage of the legal proceedings of the O.J. Simpson trial, reconstructing frames of the video to recreate the subtle motions and gestures of the participants. By simplifying the images, Ezawa forces the viewer to look more closely at nuances of expression and the issues of race and celebrity that the case evoked.

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Hiroshi SugimotoBay of Sagami, Enoura

2022

gelatin silver print, 60 x 71-3/4 inches (framed) [152.4 x 182.2 cm], edition of 5

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For decades, Hiroshi Sugimoto has photographed bodies of water around the world, creating the breathtaking Seascapes series. Bay of Sagami, Enoura is the first seascape made at Enoura Observatory, the headquarters of the Odawara Art Foundation, the organization founded by the artist. “Every time I view the sea,” Sugimoto writes, “I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.”

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Peter HujarRobert Bending (I)

1977

gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

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Peter Hujar often photographed his friends and fellow artists, emphasizing physicality and creating striking images of the body. These pictures encapsulated the relationships, music, and art that came to define the 1970s avant-garde scene in New York—as Hujar put it, he “liked people who dare.” Robert Levithan, a writer and one of Hujar’s lovers, was the subject of a series of nudes taken in the artist’s loft apartment turned studio.

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Wardell MilanNoelle lying in liberation

2022

silver leaf, acrylic, charcoal, graphite, china marker and color pencil on panel, 25-1/4 x 37-1/4 inches (framed) [64.1 x 94.6 cm]

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Wardell Milan has often depicted figures, especially marginalized bodies, in safe spaces—a distinction he sometimes conveys with color. “I try to embody love using color,” Milan noted recently. Often, the color he turns to is blue. “The many different tones of this color have come to represent affirmation, love, resilience and advocacy.” Using it, “I’m signaling to the viewer that this person or group of people, are to be championed, validated, and loved.”

Christian Marclay’s single-channel video incorporates thousands of images taken during his daily walks through London, animating them into a frenetic, flickering sequence​. The piece recalls flip-books, early cinema, and animation devices of the late nineteenth century, such as the zoetrope used by Eadweard Muybridge.

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Richard MisrachDiving Board, Salton Sea

1983

pigment print, 60-3/4 x 75-3/4 inches (framed) [154.3 x 192.4 cm], edition of 10

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An image from Desert Canto III: The Flood, one of the chapters from Richard Misrach’s long-running series focused on the American Southwest. The Flood depicts the Salton Sea, an artificial desert lake created in the 1900s, which grew into resort destination starting in the 1950s. Suffering from rising salinity and contamination from runoff, the lake became toxic, and by the 1980s many of the communities along its edges had been largely abandoned, leaving behind a surreal landscape.

The post Art Basel appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

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Kota EzawaPhotogram

2023

transparency in lightbox, 28-3/4 x 20-3/4 inches (overall) [73 x 52.7 cm], edition of 5

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For his series​ The History of Photography Remix, Ezawa recreated important art and documentary photographs in his signature flattened style, making a recognizable yet reimagined version of history.​ This image from the series depicts a photogram by László Moholy-Nagy, the influential Bauhaus artist and teacher, transforming the experimental abstraction into a glowing lightbox.

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Kota EzawaHand Vote

2008

painted wood sculpture, 11-1/8 x 16-3/4 x 5-1/2 inches (overall) [30.2 x 42.5 x 14 cm], edition of 3

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Different from many of Ezawa’s works, there is no specific reference image for Hand Vote, a painted plywood sculpture that depicts rows of men and women with raised hands. For Ezawa, the sculpture doesn’t address a particular election, but illustrates an act that is “fundamental to the idea of democracy,” he said.

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Kota EzawaA Lady and Gentleman in Black

2015

transparency in lightbox, 52 x 43 inches (overall) [132.1 x 109.2 cm], edition of 5

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This lightbox depicts a version of Rembrandt’s 1633 painting A Lady and Gentleman in Black, one of 13 works of art stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the brazen 1990 theft. Ezawa’s series The Crime of Art chronicles real and fictional museum heists and acts of art vandalism, calling attention to his own use of appropriated images while recreating artworks that may exist only as a kind of collective memory.

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Kota EzawaBrawl #2

2011

paper collage, 10-1/4 x 12-1/2 inches (framed) [26 x 31.7 cm]

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Brawl #2 depicts a scene from a notorious NBA fight that broke out during a 2004 Pistons-Pacers game and eventually led to the suspension of 9 players. In Ezawa’s paper-cutout version, the chaos of the original moment has been smoothed away. “You’re left suspended somewhere between the ostensible truth of the original footage and the aesthetic conundrum of its remake,” film professor Holly Willis remarked. Ezawa, she continues, raises “a series of questions and contradictions that pivot on the recognition of shared historical moments as they’re rendered visually.”

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Kota EzawaLennon

2011

paper collage, 9-3/4 x 12-1/8 inches (framed) [24.7 x 30.7 cm]

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Ezawa depicts John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their 1969 “bed-in”, in which the couple spoke with the press from their hotel room as a protest against the Vietnam War. The collage builds on Ezawa’s 2004 animation Lennon Sontag Beuys, which paired a stylized clip of Lennon and Ono with recordings of Susan Sontag and Joseph Beuys, as each talk about art in the context of social change.

Ezawa has often returned to projects to create related works in different formats, including light boxes, 35mm slides, watercolor, and paper collages. “It has to do with my wanting the work to progress rather than to stay as one thing,” Ezawa has noted. “I like putting images through the mill and exhausting them.”

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Kota EzawaPolaroid Supercolor 1000 (no date)

2005

transparency in lightbox, 20-5/8 x 24-5/8 inches (overall) [52.3 x 62.5 cm], edition of 5

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While many of the images from The History of Photography Remix​ are based on well-known photographs, the series also includes an image of a Kodachrome slide and a Polaroid​ camera​—self-reflexive references to the development of the media. As Lars Bang Larsen and Chus Martinez​ write in the introduction to the monograph dedicated to the series, these images emphasize that “it is no longer the art work, but technical reproduction itself that is now the star​ in the continuing drama of the art work in the age of its technical reproduction.​”

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Kota EzawaNational Anthem (New York Jets)

2019

watercolor on paper, 13-3/4 x 21-3/4 inches (framed) [33 x 53.3 cm], one of three unique variants

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​For his series National Anthem, Ezawa draws from broadcast footage of NFL athletes “taking a knee” during The Star-Spangled Banner, in protest of police violence and the oppression of people of color. The series includes hand painted animation as well as individual watercolors. Writing about the series, Aruna D’Souza has noted that by removing these images “from the unthinking speed of social media outrage…[Ezawa] lets us dwell on the implications of the action and the reverence of the gesture.”

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Kota EzawaWho’s Afraid of Black White Grey #2

2011

paper collage, 9-1/4 x 11-1/8 inches (framed) [23.4 x 28.2 cm]

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This paper collage revisits a scene from Ezawa’s two-channel animated video installation Who’s Afraid of Black, White and Grey, which ​​depicts scenes from Mike Nichols’s 1966​ film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf​. In his title, Ezawa also references Barnett Newman’s series o​f large-scale paintings​ Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, which pair powerful, flattened fields of color.

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Kota EzawaSelf Portrait

2011

paper collage, 12-3/8 x 10-3/8 inches (framed) [31.4 x 26.3 cm]

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Another image from The History of Photography Remix pictures a 19th-century photographer with his daguerreotype camera. Several images from the series depict artists with their cameras, including Ansel Adams and Andy Warhol. In Ezawa’s simplified renderings, the differences between these artists and their eras fade.

The post Independent New York: Kota Ezawa appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

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Carrie Mae WeemsThe North Star

2022

seven archival pigment prints framed with convex glass, 116-1/2 x 37 inches (overall installed) [295.9 x 93.9 cm]

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In Carrie Mae Weems’s The North Star, 2022, the artist explores a painful family story in which her grandfather, Frank Weems, a tenant farmer and union activist, disappeared after being attacked by a white mob in Earle, Arkansas, in 1936. Though he was presumed dead, he narrowly escaped and made his way to Chicago on foot by following the North Star, but was never able to reunite with his family. The work makes an apt metaphor for Frank Weems’s life and the longer history of the bright star, Polaris, which helped guide those escaping slavery. Extended across a long, horizontal plane, the photographs make up an alternative starry night sky, while highlighting the central image, around which the others extend like the branches of a family tree. 

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Hiroshi SugimotoEiffel Tower

1998

gelatin silver print, 71-3/4 x 60 inches (framed) [182.2 x 152.4 cm], edition of 5

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The Eiffel Tower remains an iconic element of Parisian architecture, visible even from within the walls of the Grand Palais Éphémère, where this year’s Paris Photo again takes place. In Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographic reinterpretation, the artist pictures the 1889 monument slightly out of focus and isolated from its urban context. Thus, the details of the iron framework fall away, leaving only the contours of its recognizable shape. The photograph becomes a testament to the timelessness of the tower and the ongoing aims of science, industry, and innovation. 

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Hiroshi SugimotoBrush Impression 0859 (Fire)

2023

gelatin silver print, 48-3/8 x 41 inches (framed) [122.9 x 104.1 cm], unique

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In Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Brush Impression, the artist draws upon his study of Japanese calligraphy to record the movement of his brush across the surface of the paper, producing gestural shapes as well as splashes, bubbles, and traces of bristles. Rather than using ink, however, Sugimoto paints with darkroom chemicals on gelatin silver paper to produce striking black and white compositions. Here, the fluidity of the brushstrokes mirrors the kanji character for the elemental expression of water.

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An 1880 photograph of a Siamese theater troupe pictures the stage from across the room, widening its view to encompass also the audience at far left. The slightly long exposure captures the movements of the central figures, along with their delicate gestures of touch, like a foot resting on another’s knee, and a hand pressing against a back.

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Wardell MilanThe Engineer

2022

graphite, oil paste, cut-and-pasted paper on yupo paper, 11-5/8 x 9-3/8 inches (framed) [29.53 x 23.8 cm]

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Wardell Milan’s character study, The Engineer, combines collaged photographs, colored pencil, graphite, and paint to construct an “exquisite corpse” of multiple body parts and their shifting perspectival views. A bit of an engineer himself, the artist playfully combines the pieces of his multi-media works to explore the duality between marginalization and the freedom of expression.

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Peter HujarChuck Gretsch (with Cigar)

1981

gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

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To compose this photograph of friend Chuck Gretsch, Peter Hujar stooped to his level, positioning his camera intimately close to the supine figure. Imbuing his photographs with the intimacy that so often determined his relationships with subjects, Hujar pairs the introspective gaze of his sitter with a column of curling smoke, rising ever so lightly from the cigar gripped between his lips.

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Diane ArbusChrist in a lobby, N.Y.C. 1964

gelatin silver print / printed by Neil Selkirk, 10-7/8 x 10 inches (sheet) [27.6 x 25.4 cm], edition of 75

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This curious photograph of an illuminated portrait of Christ in a New York lobby exhibits the kind of strange dualities that interested Diane Arbus throughout her career. The reflection of the portrait in the marbled surface of the adjoining wall not only duplicates the image in reverse, but projects a ghostly likeness of the holy figure, like the stained record that is the Veil of Veronica.

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Eadweard MuybridgeA: Ascending incline. B: Ascending incline with a 50-lb. dumbbell. C: Descending incline. D: Descending incline with a 50-lb. dumbbell

1887

collotype, 19 x 24 inches (sheet) [48.3 x 61 cm]

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From 1884 to 1887, Eadweard Muybridge amassed an impressive compendium of photographic studies on human and animal locomotion. Developed as tools for artists and scientists, Muybridge’s photographs documented anonymous figures, clothed or naked, in a variety of movements. Though the title does not suggest it, the figure pictured is Muybridge himself.

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Carleton E. WatkinsNevada Fall, 700 ft., Yosemite

1861

mammoth-plate albumen print, 32 x 36-1/2 inches (framed) [82 x 93 cm]

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From Carleton Watkins’s first Yosemite trip in 1861, this mammoth-plate photograph frames Nevada Falls within a long-exposure look at the Merced River below. This work is signed on the recto by the artist himself and was exhibited in the pivotal Watkins retrospective which took place at the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It is being offered for the first time.

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Hiroshi SugimotoPinon Juniper Forest

2012

gelatin silver print, 60 x 80-1/2 inches (framed) [152.4 x 204.5 cm], edition of 5

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The dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History—which transport viewers to far-flung corners of the globe at various moments in history—have long fascinated Hiroshi Sugimoto. During a 2012 visit to the museum, the artist positioned his camera at a particular vantage point before the artificial scene from where the viewer’s illusion of total immersion within the landscape could be achieved.

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Richard MisrachSubmerged Gas Pumps, Salton Sea

1983

pigment print, 60-3/4 x 75-3/4 inches (framed) [154.3 x 192.4 cm], edition of 10

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The third chapter of Richard Misrach’s series, Desert Cantos, “The Flood,” focuses on the Salton Sea of Southern California, a lake created by an engineering mistake at the beginning of the twentieth century. A popular tourist destination throughout the 1950s and 60s, excessive irrigation flooded the area further, leaving infrastructure like these gas pumps eerily submerged and the water at risk of contamination. The fraught history of the desert landscape, and its political turmoil, remains subtly coded within Misrach’s picturesque depiction.

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Robert AdamsShopping center. Wheat Ridge, Colorado

1968-71

gelatin silver print, 13 x 11 inches (mount) [33.0 x 27.9 cm]

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Apart from the expansive views of Colorado’s Front Range, Robert Adams’s photographic studies of the mid-century suburban expansion outside of Denver captured more intimate scenes of everyday life, like this parking lot outside the local grocery store. A line of cars obfuscates the natural horizon beyond, yet a resilient tree rises into frame alongside the shop signs reflecting America’s car-centric culture.

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Harry DutchyshynMPRTC 8801-1 TSU, Camp Gordon, Georgia, Company C

1953

gelatin silver print, 19-3/4 x 12 inches (sheet) [50.2 x 30.5 cm]

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American military photographer Harry Dutchyshyn emigrated in 1926 from Austria to the U.S., where he worked as the post photographer at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey before transferring to Camp Gordon in Georgia after the Second World War. Dutchyshyn’s 1953 portrait of the 229 soldiers of the camp’s Company C was taken weeks after the end of the Korean War, and just five years after President Harry Truman’s executive order desegregating the United States Military. The changing racial makeup of the armed services in the aftermath of an intense period of global conflict is reflected in the class portrait, which includes the last names and hometowns of the individuals pictured.

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Bernd & Hilla BecherGrain Elevator [Getreideheber], Buffalo, New York, U.S.A.

1982

gelatin silver print, 20-5/8 x 24 inches (sheet) [52.4 x 61 cm], edition of 5

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Grain elevators, which afforded agricultural production the privilege of industrial scale, were a longtime subject for Bernd and Hilla Becher. Approaching this example near Buffalo, New York, the husband and wife duo photographed their subject according to the “impersonal” and “uninflected” style consistent throughout their career. Yet the lettering adorning its surface, as well as the line of railroad tracks and surrounding buildings, imbue the site with a sense for its unique character.

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When Dadaist and Surrealist Man Ray began his renowned series of photograms (i.e., Rayographs) shortly after his arrival in Paris in 1921, he layered atop photosensitive paper everyday objects such as thumbtacks, coils, combs, and more. Here, Kota Ezawa’s reinterpretation further symbolizes the rudimentary forms that have become canonical in the history of photography. Installed as a lightbox, Ezawa’s “remix” re-animates the dreamlike image hovering somewhere between abstraction and representation.

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Carrie Mae WeemsPyramids of Rome – Ancient Rome

2006

digital chromogenic print, 73-1/2 x 61-1/2 inches (framed) [186.7 x 156.2 cm], edition of 5

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In the 2006 series of self-portraits, Carrie Mae Weems situates herself within monumental landscapes and sweeping vistas in and around Rome. Dressed in a long black dress with her back turned toward the camera, Weems confronts iconic architectural sites dotting the city and, in turn, the structures of power they symbolize. As Weems states, “You are always aware that you are sort of a minion in relationship to this enormous edifice—the edifice of power.”

The post Paris Photo appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

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The earliest work in the exhibition is Charles Clifford’s moody study of the Alhambra, circa 1858; the most recent is Lee Friedlander’s bullet-riddled “NO SHOOTING” sign, made in June 2014. Photographic objects by Sol LeWitt, Jess, Christian Marclay, and Bernd & Hilla Becher find affinities with Charles Sheeler, Helen Levitt, Thomas Eakins, and William Eggleston. A found snapshot of an all-female wedding, dated 1930, appears near Nan Goldin’s 1978 self-portrait as a dominatrix and an 1860 daguerreotype of two girls holding an image of their deceased mother.

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Eadweard Muybridge and Diane Arbus—two very different artists whose work contains seemingly inexhaustible achievements—are among the photographers who make repeat appearances throughout The Plot Thickens. Other artists included are: Mel Bochner, Katy Grannan, Alfred Stieglitz, Kota Ezawa, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, the Louisville optician who left behind an unforgettable body of work at his death in 1972, at the age of 46.

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Fraenkel Gallery opened in San Francisco in September 1979 with an exhibition of recently discovered albumen prints by the nineteenth-century photographer Carleton Watkins. Since then, the gallery has presented more than 300 exhibitions exploring photography and its connections to the other arts, and published 55 books on subjects ranging from Edward Hopper’s influence on photography to the sculptor David Smith’s multi-decade involvement with photographs, as well as the complete library of Diane Arbus and nine monographs by Lee Friedlander.

The post The Plot Thickens appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

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More than a century of attempts to depict, through photographs, a reality beyond appearances is testament to a stubborn conviction that what can be seen is not all there is. In the book’s introduction Jeffrey Fraenkel writes, “From the moment of its invention almost 175 years ago, photography has proven adept at depicting the photographable: the solid, the concrete, that which can be seen. […] But another tradition exists, a parallel history in which photographers and other artists have attempted to describe by photographic means that which is not so readily seen: thought, time, ghosts, god, dreams. A vast array of strategies has been employed to bring such pictures about, tactics that have intersected and enriched the strains of modern art.”

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The exhibition will be installed in all three of the gallery’s spaces. Visitors will encounter Jakob Ottonowitsch’s Spark captured on the surface of the body of a well-washed prostitute, Tom Friedman’s Caveman, T. Glendenning Hamilton’s portrait of The T’zan Teleplasm, and Bruce Conner’s ethereal depiction of an angel. Among other works included are Wolfgang Tillmans’s Mental Picture from 2001, Frederick Sommer’s portrait of Max Ernst as a vanishing spirit, and Gerhard Richter’s attempt to depict the incomprehensibility of 9/11, titled simply September.

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Artists participating in the exhibition include Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, F. Baldet & F. Quénisset, Walead Beshty, Mel Bochner, Sophie Calle, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Liz Deschenes, Kota Ezawa, Tom Friedman, Adam Fuss, Paul Graham, Idris Khan, Clarence John Laughlin, Richard Learoyd, Glenn Ligon, Adrien Majewski, Man Ray, Christian Marclay, Chris McCaw, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Richard Misrach, Jakob Ottonowitsch von Narkiewitsch-Jodko, Gerhard Richter, Frederick Sommer, Alfred Stieglitz, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Wolfgang Tillmans.

The post The Unphotographable appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.