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Lorna Bieber
IMAGES: FOUND AND LOST
Exhibition Season: January 29 - May 29, 2011
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IMAGES: FOUND AND LOST
"The artificial photographic compositions that I create do not exist in our world; they reside in the depths of our collective consciousness."-Lorna Bieber
These were landscapes and illustrations for a comfortable bourgeois sensibility. Nature as mere ornament; landscape as empty metaphor. Wilderness is hinted at here, but scrupulously drained of all its unruliness. Lost are the power, chaos and visceral energy of wild nature; substituted with a relaxed, sumptuous glowing landscape that appears to hold no threat, promise no disruption and undermine no feeling of security. Carefully placed trees, perfect blossoms, vertiginous cliffs, moonlit stillness wrapping the hushed land and picturesque peasants and yeomen laboring elegantly in the fields. Nothing breaks the spell in these disturbingly serene vistas. And yet they are so utterly false as to be, perhaps, a little disturbing. Lorna Bieber mines this territory for her imagery. Her finished pieces are ambiguous, spatially-complex, dream-like and redolent with memory. They excavate an ersatz nature that appears impenetrable, ambiguous, remote, detached and unknowable. A receding nature ever pulling away from our grasp.
In her mural-sized photographs and wall sized montages, Lorna Bieber begins with anonymous generic illustrations and images found in books and magazines. These are then reinterpreted through a range of manipulations including traditional and non-traditional photographic techniques. This complex, many-layered method of production results in unique gelatin silver prints that reveal unnoticed, unappreciated, and poignant images previously imbedded within their generic sources. |
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Although originally a painter, Lorna Bieber has been exploring alternative photographic processes and techniques since 1988. She has had solo exhibitions at McKenzie Fine Art, I-20 Gallery, Clementine Gallery and Julie Saul Gallery, all in New York; Beard Gallery, Wheaton College; Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts; Alva Gallery, New London, CT; the Houston Center for Photography; Thomas Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis; CEPA Gallery, Buffalo; The Bronx Museum Satellite Gallery; Woods-Gerry Gallery, Rhode Island School of Design; and the Box Gallery, Santa Fe.
Bieber's art and photography have been presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; LA County Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum; the New York Public Library; Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; Biblioth�que nationale de France, Paris; Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna; Fotoforum West, Innsbruck; the School of Fine Art in Rheims, France and at numerous galleries in New York including Julie Saul; Althea Viafora Gallery; Paine Webber Gallery; Caren Golden Fine Art; Franklin Furnace; A&P Gallery and Art in General. Other group exhibition venues have included the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Southeast Museum of Photography; Neuberger and Berman, New York; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach; Ross Art Museum, Ohio Wesleyan University; Winnipeg Art Gallery; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; Megan Fox Gallery, Santa Fe; Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans; Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University; Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College; Prudential Insurance Company, New York; Beard Gallery at Wheaton College; White Columns; Chicago Cultural Center; Rosa Esman Gallery and the Woodstock Center for Photography. Lorna Bieber lives and works in New York.
All montages on loan from the collection of the artist. Murals on loan from the collection of the C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, MD.
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"...Bieber's work probes difficult but timely questions about how photographic representations of the world around us affect our being: What is the role of memory in our perception of place? Have representations of nature so insinuated themselves into our knowledge of the world and our understanding of self that they are inextricably entwined with them? To what extent do archetypal pictures and stories imprint our consciousness? Bieber's vast and expansive photographs wrap viewers in these questions, leaving aside didactic urgency and easy answers. Her skeletal black-and-white palette eliminates chromatic distraction, narrowing our attention to the nature and function of art in a world that sheds images continuously. Locating ourselves within that miasma is a challenge-one that Bieber's art eloquently and intelligently invites us to contemplate." Lisa Hostetler-from the catalogue essay |
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Saturday, March 26
Artist Talk 5:00pm
Reception 6:00-7:00pm |
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MUSEUM HOURS
OPEN - Tues, Thurs, Fri: 11-5 pm; Wed: 11-7 pm; Weekends: 1-5 pm
June, July and December Hours: Tues-Sun: 12-4 pm CLOSED - Mondays and for the following dates:
December 17 - January 11, Easter Sunday, Daytona 500 Weekend, Daytona State College Spring Break, July 4, July 31-August 17, Thanksgiving Weekend
MUSEUM LOCATION
Unless noted otherwise, all museum exhibitions, events and films are presented at the Southeast Museum of Photography which is located on the Daytona Beach campus of Daytona State College at 1200 International Speedway Blvd, three miles east of 1-95.
The museum is located in the Mori Hosseini Center (Bld. 1200).
Visitor parking is available. Gallery Admission is free.
For detailed exhibition and program information visit www.smponline.org or call the museum information hotline at (386) 506-4475.
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Southeast Museum of Photography
A Service of Daytona State College 1200 W. International Speedway Blvd.
Daytona Beach, FL 32114
(386) 506-4475
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