Exhibitions | 1984 | Fraenkel Gallery

Searching for Artifacts

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:52:14 +0000

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Joel-Peter Witkin

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:48:22 +0000

Drawing from historical themes in art, literature, religion, and photography, Joel-Peter Witkin constructs fantasies around fragments of contemporary life – creating elaborate stages, sometimes working on drawings, props and sets for weeks before bringing his subjects into the controlled, and often highly choreographed environments. Witkin’s subjects are from the dark side of the real world. Freaks, transsexuals, dwarfs, fetuses, cadavers and lavatory animals form the basis for Witkin’s work over the past two years – a period that has been extraordinarily productive for him. More complex and more embellished, his recent imagery also has more of a direct connection with circumstance than his earlier work. Scratching and drawing on the negatives, Witkin then prints through a tissue and selectively tones and bleaches the final prints producing elegant and seductive images of frightening subjects. This veiling of the image and layering of historical ideas, lures the viewer into the picture, only to be abruptly drawn back into the reality of the present. Witkin’s work raises questions and comments upon many issues of contemporary culture, while at the same time challenges our ideas about the nature of the medium of photography itself. These images will be exhibited along with recent 30” x 40” prints, sketches and drawings upon which the photographs are based. Several of the images were made during a residency in San Francisco this past winter.

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Fifth Anniversary Exhibition

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:45:18 +0000

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Photo-collages

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:42:15 +0000

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Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:38:53 +0000

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Nicholas Nixon

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:34:53 +0000

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Bill Dane

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:31:54 +0000

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Hollywood Still Lifes

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:28:51 +0000

“Still Life”, Hollywood color photographs made for promotional use by movie studios between 1940 and 1970 will be on view at Fraenkel Gallery, 55 Grant Ave. The exhibition provides a rare and amusing opportunity to explore an aspect of post-war American popular culture through previously unknown and unpublished photographs. The exhibition is a result of two years of research by Diane Keaton (an actress and cinema enthusiast) and Marvin Heiferman (the former director of Castelli Graphics in New York) through studio archives, basements, and photographer’s files. The visual elements of the moving picture are isolated in many of the production stills on view providing a different experience from observing the films themselves. These pictures, as well as those of movie stars at home, including Dana Andrews, Ann Blyth, Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan, present a cross section of the Hollywood myth-making process and offer an interesting commentary on American cultural aspirations.

Marvin Heiferman writes in his essay from the accompanying book Still Life:

The photographs comment, in a backhanded way, on much of contemporary photography, especially the work which falls into the “directorial” (eg: Cindy Sherman, Duane Michaels, Eileen Cowin) or “fabricated” (eg: Robert Cummings, Les Krims, Ellen Brooks, Lucas Samaras) aesthetic.

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Photography in Spain in the Nineteenth Century

Erin Nelson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:26:45 +0000

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