ROBERT KLEIN GALLERY
Fall 2010
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CIG HARVEYSept 24 through Nov 6 Opening reception: Sept 24, 6-8pm
Cig Harvey has been using past and present personal experiences as a source of inspiration for her photographs for the past 12 years. She considers her photographs vignettes that depict autobiographical daily life in all its complexities. In addition to self-portraits, Harvey makes pictures of family and close friends to better understand their relationships. Her photographs are an attempt to legitimize her moments of uncertainty, as well as to visually celebrate times of elation, when we are reminded that the world, in all its complexities, can be mind-blowingly beautiful. She uses color, gesture and space to seduce our imaginations Cig Harvey is a working fine-art photographer and educator, whose work has been highlighted in PDN, Popular Photography and American Photography. Her photographs have been exhibited widely and are in the permanent collections of major museums including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. Recent solo exhibitions of Harvey's work have been held in New York, Houston, Aspen and Toronto.
Cig Harvey is an Assistant professor at The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University and teaches summer workshops in both Maine and Santa Fe. She is married to Doug Stradley, a filmmaker with the profile of a Roman emperor. Together they live in Boston and on the coast of Maine with their dog Scarlet Snacks.to view more images, click here
Image: Devlin and the Fireflies, 2010 |
The Robert Klein Gallery is pleased to announce representation of
Gregory Vershbow's photographs hinge between the imagined and the observed. His work consists of photographic series and narrative books that combine his photography with original drawings and text. Joining the history of science with art history, and working both digitally and with experimental chemistry, Vershbow seeks an alternative experience of the past and present. His most recent projects are "Art in a Liminal Space" and "The Alchemist's Tree".
"Art in a Liminal Space" is an ongoing series for which Vershbow travels to different museums and archives to photograph works of art in storage and restoration. In these seemingly still and otherwise unobserved spaces between exhibition and non-exhibition, Vershbow calls attention to dramatic interactions between objects and materials. Through making these images he hopes to better understand the power of art in the absence of its audience.
"The Alchemist's Tree" is a work of historical science fiction (set at the turn of the Twentieth Century) that tells the story of a pair of botanists who attempt to re-create the ancestor of modern plants. The narrative is presented in the form of a portfolio of fine-art, black and white prints and in combination with drawings and text as a limited edition artist's book.
Vershbow received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2010 and holds a B.A from Hampshire College. His books and photographs have been exhibited in solo shows on the east coast and can be found in permanent collections that include the Art Institute of Chicago, the Getty Museum and the Boston Athenaeum. Vershbow will have his first international exhibition at Gallery Kernstrasse in N�remberg, Germany in July 2010.to view more images, click here
Image: Wrapped with Care, from the Series "Art in a
Liminal Space" 2009 |
new work by... PAULETTE TAVORMINA
ARTIST'S STATEMENT Natura Morta I have always been fascinated by the magic of objects, the
majesty and delicacy of nature, and the world of culinary delights. I have
blended my twenty years of professional photography, my experience styling
cookbooks and procuring props for motion pictures, with my love of 17th
century Old Master paintings to create these still-life photographs. My greatest influences have been Francisco de Zurbaran,
Adriaen Coorte and Giovanna Garzoni, in particular Zurbaran's mysterious use of
dramatic light, Coorte's unique spacial placement of treasured objects and
Garzoni's masterful composition and color palette. The works of these artists
remind us of the irretrievable passing of time - tempus fugit. (Paulette Tavormina currently lives and works in New York
City where she photographs works of art for
Sotheby's) To view more images, click here
Image: Cabbage and Melon, after J.S.C., 2010
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new work by... JULIE BLACKMON
ARTIST'S STATEMENT Domestic Vacations
The Dutch proverb "a Jan Steen household" originated in the 17th
century and is used today to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy
children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen,
along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, helped
inspire this body of work. I am the oldest of nine children and now the
mother of three. As Steen's personal narratives of family life
depicted nearly 400 yrs. ago, the conflation of art and life is an area I
have explored in photographing the everyday life of my family and the
lives of my sisters and their families at home. These images are both
fictional and auto-biographical, and reflect not only our lives today
and as children growing up in a large family, but also move beyond the
documentary to explore the fantastic elements of our everyday lives,
both imagined and real.
The stress, the chaos, and the need to simultaneously escape and
connect are issue that I investigate in this body of work. We live in a
culture where we are both "child centered" and "self-obsessed." The
struggle between living in the moment versus escaping to another reality
is intense since these two opposites strive to dominate. Caught in the
swirl of soccer practices, play dates, work, and trying to find our way
in our "make-over" culture, we must still create the space to find
ourselves. The expectations of family life have never been more at odds
with each other. These issues, as well as the relationship between the
domestic landscape of the past and present, are issues I have explored
in these photographs. I believe there are moments that can be found
throughout any given day that bring sanctuary. It is in finding these
moments amidst the stress of the everyday that my life as a mother
parallels my work as an artist, and where the dynamics of family life
throughout time seem remarkably unchanged. As an artist and as a
mother, I believe life's most poignant moments come from the ability to
fuse fantasy and reality: to see the mythic amidst the chaos.
To view more images, click here
Image: High Dive, 2010
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new work by... LEN GITTLEMAN
These photographs were taken in the early 1960's in several New England cities, including Pawtucket and Gloucester, using an 8x10 view camera and Eastman color negative film.
Gittleman studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago in the 1950's with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Gittleman began making photograms while at the Institute of Design by arranging opaque and transparent materials on light sensitive paper then exposing the paper to light. In the 1970's he adapted the same technique to Polacolor film and is best known for the resulting abstract studies of light, form and color.
He has had a long career making films, doing commercial photography, and teaching at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University from 1962 - 1975.To view more images, click here
Image: Winslow's Auto Pin, c. 1962
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new work by... DAVID FOKOS
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Using long exposures, ranging from 20 seconds to 60
minutes,
I have worked with the camera's unique ability to "average
time" in order to examine and understand the mechanisms of human
perception and
to reconcile our differing subjective and objective views
of the
world. I believe that our sense of experience is built up over time
- a composite of many short-term events. For example, if you
meet
someone for the first time, your impression of that person is
not a snapshot
in your mind of the first time you saw that person, but
rather a portrait you have assembled from many separate moments. Each time
that
person exhibits a new facial expression or hand gesture, you
add that
to your impression of who that person is. Your image of that
person - how you feel about that person -- is formed over time,
rather than upon
a single expression or gesture. Likewise, I believe that our impression of the world is
based
upon our total experience. For example, the ocean has always made
me feel
calm, relaxed, and contented. If I were to take an
instantaneous snapshot
of the ocean, the photo would include waves with jagged
edges, salt
spray, and foam. This type of image does not make me feel calm -
it
does not represent how the ocean makes me feel as I stare out
over the
water. What I am responding to is the underlying, fundamental form
of the
ocean, its vast expansiveness and the strong line of the horizon, both of
which are very stable, calming forms. With this series of images I have used the camera as a scientific instrument, the way a biologist might use a microscope
or an
astronomer a telescope, to reveal what is felt but often unseen.
To view more images, click here
Image: Long Poles, San Simeon, California, 2010
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38 NEWBURY STREET, BOSTON phone 617-267-7997 web www.robertkleingallery.com
HOURS Tuesday through Friday 10-5:30, Saturday 11-5
DIRECTIONS MBTA: Green Line to Arlington We're located on Newbury Street between Arlington and Berkeley
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