John Chiara, Echo Lake at Meyers Grade (Far Left),
50” x 78”, Dye Destruction Process, Unique Photograph, 2010

South Gallery, In Conversation: June Schwarcz and John Chiara presents a landscape of inscrutable sculpture and metallic photography, full of mystery and alchemical beauty. Curated by Muriel Maffre, this unique pairing of two artists who transform their material with such mastery leaves us wondering what genre of art it is: Sculpture? Photography? Painting? Yes. June Schwarcz’ non-utilitarian vessels seem to be ceramic, but are actually painted metal — inexplicably weighty and yet ethereally weightless. John Chiara uses a camera obscura to produce his epic photography, developing his simple landscape images on large sheets of thin metal that he then frames to hang on the wall. The effect of the conversation between the two artists is revolutionary in its elegance and mysteriously simple beauty.

The Richmond Arts Center

Hisaji Hara

A Photographic Portrayal of the Paintings of Balthus

ROSEGALLERY is pleased to announce the American debut of Hisaji Hara’s “A photographic portrayal of the paintings of Balthus.”  Black and white prints from this acclaimed series will be on view 19 May through 07 July, 2012.  An opening reception will be held Saturday, 19 May, 2012 from five to seven pm.

Using medium-format film and meticulous in-camera methods, Hisaji Hara reinvents the legendary and provocative paintings of highly revered 20^th century figurative painter, Balthus (1908-2001).  In his staged tableaux, Hara appropriates the adolescent subjects featured in Balthus’ canvases, paying particular attention to details in posture and expression.  The setting as well as the costuming, however, are uniquely Japanese.  Thus, the artist culls from the suggestive vocabulary of the originals – paintings simultaneously youthful and erotic – while playing with strict architectural formalism and Lolitaesque obsessions that anchor the work in Japanese cultural traditions.

Hara’s technique involves creating multiple exposures in-camera without computer manipulation, coupled with the use of smoke machines and cinematic lighting.  The result is a highly enchanting and singular print quality that reinforces the poignant longing and adolescent reverie that his subjects embody.

Hisaji Hara was born in Tokyo, Japan, and graduated from the Musashino University of Art and Design in 1986.  In 1993 he emigrated to the United States and worked as a director of photography for television and documentary film before returning to Japan in 2001.  “A photographic portrayal of the paintings of Balthus” was made over a period of five years beginning in 2006.  In 2010 he received first prize at the Yokohama Photo Festival for the work.

Image:
Hisaji Hara
A Study of “Le Passage du Commerce – Saint Andre”, 2009.
Courtesy of the artist, MEM Gallery, Tokyo and ROSEGALLERY, Los Angeles

2F Exhibition Gallery

Untitled, from the series of Ametsuchi 2012

Kawauchi Rinko:
Illuminance , Ametsuchi , Seeing Shadow

May 12 (Sat) – July 16 (Mon)

The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography is delighted to present the solo exhibition entitled Kawauchi Rinko: Illuminance, Ametsuchi, Seeing Shadow, devoted to the work of Kawauchi Rinko, a photographer who has exemplified the period from 2000 on, winning support largely from the younger generation, and has also achieved renown on the international stage.

This exhibition, Kawauchi Rinko’s first solo exhibition at a museum in the Tokyo area, will introduce Illuminance, which mainly consists of recent work in the 6 x 6 cm format, the style of photography that is almost synonymous with this artist, as well as her latest work, Ametsuchi and Seeing Shadow, series being exhibited for the first time.

Kawauchi Rinko has spent nearly 15 years shooting the photographs that make up the Illuminance series, in which we see a deepening of themes that first appeared in her Utatane series, for which she won the 2002 Kimura Ihee Award. Here again we see, with a greater depth of style, everyday private scenes shot in a way that illuminates the universal brilliance of life. The artist’s unique world of images develops spatially, mingling light and dark, life and death, beauty and sadness in a large number of momentary scenes. The new Ametsuchi and Seeing Shadow series, which include both large prints and video works, create intuitive depictions of the cosmic order, the connection between heaven and earth, primitive scenes, through a variety of earthly phenomena, including the burning off of the fields around Mt. Aso in early spring. A group of photographs photographed with a large-format 4 x 5 inch camera and presented as large-scale prints, about two meters wide, combined with an experiential video presentation on a large screen reflect a view of the world on a huge scale not seen in Kawauchi’s earlier work.

The exhibition consists of approximately 80 works that present the essence and fascination of Kawauchi Rinko’s creative cosmos and draws close to new developments.

Untitled, from the series of Illuminance　2007

Untitled, from the series of Illuminance　2009

Please see more at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography website

Lise Sarfati On Hollywood.

Interview by François Adragna.

Malaïka #09, Corner 7th Street & Spring, 2010 Courtesy of  Lise Sarfati and ROSEGALLERY

What is a photographic series?

It is a set of photographs which are linked to each other and which create a whole. Something which shuts us in and in which we cannot find the exit. It is also a way of thinking. A form.

Is On Hollywood a series?

On Hollywood is a series. But each photograph can be looked at individually. It is a series because the images interrelate and reinforce the photographic form.

When did you start this series?

I started it in 2009 and finished it in 2010.

The colors and texture of your photographs have a particular quality. What film did you use?

I worked with Kodachrome 64 transparency film. The rolls were sent to Kansas in the only laboratory which still developed this film. I never saw the results immediately. I realized that this element of not seeing, not knowing, was a determining factor. This situation : where I had to wait and did not know brought me back to the mystery I felt when I discovered photography at the age of 13. A revelation, but after the fact. This Kodachrome film stock is also the one used in Hollywood movies of the 1940s. I wanted to complete the loop and end the story of Kodachrome film on Hollywood. I used this outmoded film stock in the context of Hollywood, which is at the peak of technological advancement and colossal production costs.

I was not part of a huge Hollywood production but on a boulevard where I photographed real women (without paying them, this I insist on in my work) who are considered outsiders.

Their weaknesses became their strength ,raising them to the rank of anti-heroes. It is true that film, photography and video have surpassed painting and sculpture and that it may seem odd to return to Kodachrome slides when analog film, photography and video have been overtaken by the digital format. But it is precisely this paradox which interested me.

One often wrongfully compares photographs to paintings. This is nonsense. The image does not refer to painting but to something alive through which passes silence…

Dana, 6323 Hollywood Blvd, 2010 Courtesy of  Lise Sarfati and ROSEGALLERY

Finally, why not a movie?

Because of the silence and stillness, because of the power of the fixed image and its circulation as an object.

On Hollywood is the boulevard but it is also movies?

Everything transits through the image. We are shaped by the image. We need to try and have a critical gaze on the image.

My series On Hollywood shows women who really live in Los Angeles.

They probably came to project themselves in the Hollywood landscape and to take advantage of the possibilities of success in this landscape. But everyone knows this story. It is a current affair.
Hollywood interested me more for the concept of landscape as fantasy. These women smoked in general. They are mostly dancers or actresses waiting for a part.

Emily, 2860 Sunset Blvd, 2010 Courtesy of  Lise Sarfati and ROSEGALLERY

Why smoking?

Because smoking in the United States of America and in California is a revolutionary act. To show that one does not care, that one does what one pleases despite obvious health risks, is already an act of protest.

What seems strange is that these women need to be outdoors to smoke whereas smoking, for me, was always something that took place during a romantic or friendly encounter, or we simply smoked as teenagers, sitting around a table talking.

To have to be outside, on the boulevard, in the forgotten landscape of Hollywood to smoke seemed astonishing.

Everyone was behind the wheel of their car. These women did not have enough money to buy a car. I met Ajibike at midnight. I was photographing another woman in a parking lot. She came by in a pair of shorts. She was muscular and walked fast. She handed me her card in a decisive way, as if it was something obvious… She also wanted to become an image…

Elisabeth, North West Corner Sunset & Poinsettia, 2010 Courtesy of  Lise Sarfati and ROSEGALLERY

Who are these women?

These are women who work in Hollywood : saleswomen, dancers, strippers, junkies, fetishists, unknown actresses, out-of-towners, lost… Women at the end of their rope.

Many identify themselves with actresses or famous people. In fact I understood that they identified themselves with images. Malaïka was similar to Marilyn Monroe even if she did not say it. She was always expecting us to make the connection though. She had many of Marilyn’s attitudes : her giddiness, mood swings which would go from very sad to artificial joy… Elizabeth wore a tattoo with the date of Queen Elizabeth’s death. Her face, her makeup, the thinness of her eyebrows and her pale skin were reminiscent of the Queen mother and the imagery linked to her representation…

How would you define the Hollywood landscape?

The Hollywood landscape is elastic. Timeless. The 1930s, the 1950s, the 1970s. A series of locations without end, all real, accumulated next to each other. Or images of locations which stream by you on the boulevards.

I was always told that Hollywood was dirty and full of junkies. Maybe this was behind the scenes : a masked landscape where thousands of women with eye-opening stories were hiding.

How was the idea for the series conceived?

In 2003, when I travelled across the United States to create The New Life, I decided to return to Los Angeles to photograph the women I passed by on the boulevard. It was unconscious, just a desire.

But the idea took several years to grow and take on a precise form. Although they were photographed in the Hollywood landscape, I wanted the series to give the impression that these women felt at home there, like they were in their bedrooms, lost in thought.

Kelly, 4306 Beverly Blvd, 2010 Courtesy of  Lise Sarfati and ROSEGALLERY

How did this idea evolve and how did you materialize it?

When I spent a year in Aix en Provence, in the southeast of France, I was part of a group of situationists which was very theoretical. The concept of psycho-geographical wandering, created by Guy Debord, was our main activity. Guy Debord defines psycho-geography as the study of the precise effects of geographical surroundings on the emotional behavior of individuals. And wandering is a technique to experience brief sojourns in a variety of atmospheres.

In Los Angeles I wandered through Hollywood. I stayed several months. I did not wander like a director of photography or an artist seeking new locations. I just tried to find places where I felt good physically, places which affected my emotional behavior. These places were street corners, bits of sidewalk and small spaces… I returned ten, twenty, fifty times to the same place.

I stayed for a long time on the corner where we see Elizabeth near a shop where they sell grass and near a tobacco shop. All of a sudden, Elizabeth, whom I did not know, arrived. I asked her if I could photograph her. She told me she would be back. I saw her get into the back seat of a car. Two men were in the front, one of them at the wheel. The car disappeared.

I figured she took off with some dealers. She returned and I photographed her. She seemed quite scared. She was thin. She wore a pendant with a small butterfly. She had braces on her teeth that fascinated me because of her age… I took my photograph quickly. I had the feeling she was going to fall over she looked so fragile… Then she said she had to leave, I asked if we could see each other again, she said : “Yes.” We made an appointment on Hollywood Boulevard and she finally never showed up.

Did you encounter any difficulties?

Creating a series is always like standing in front of a chain of mountains of difficulties and overcoming them…

Ajibike, 6433 Hollywood Blvd, 2010 Courtesy of  Lise Sarfati and ROSEGALLERY

The uniqueness of your work is based on the gaze. It reminds me of Roland Barthes who said : « The gaze, if it insists (if it lasts, if it traverses, with the photograph, Time) the gaze is always potentially crazy : it is at once the effect of truth and the effect of madness. »

Truth and madness. Subjectivity. No, I think I first start with a subjective mental image and I try to make it cross through reality, I project it on the outside world. I expect from the viewer, that they will project their subjectivity into the image as well. Also, I hate explaining my work. It is made to be looked at.

Your rhythm could be defined as an oscillation between the character and the landscape but we never really know which one you choose…

Yes, I try to vacillate from one to the other… It is a construction which resembles me. It is also an idea or a way of life.

On Hollywood at ROSEGALLERY, Los Angeles, 25^th February until 26 March, 2012

All images Copyright Lise Sarfati Courtesy of ROSEGALLERY

Dec 3rd through Feb 18, 2012

ROSEGALLERY

For his latest body of work, Elger Esser traveled along the Nile from Luxor to Aswan with an 8 x 10 land camera, photographing the banks of the river, traditional feluccas, dahabiyas, and fisherman. Taken from a great distance with the artist’s signature precision and formal grace, the photographs of Voyage en Egypte are calm, grandiose landscapes in addition to being provocative meditations on light, space and color.  Large expanses of water and sky in dissipating pastel hues form the cornerstone of these compositions, while the land and civilization itself provide sharp but remote horizon lines which are dwarfed by the natural elements.  Like 19^th century landscape paintings, which are strongly echoed in these works, Esser’s latest photographs capture an element of the sublime in nature.  The mystery and beauty of the river, which has been the lifeline of Egypt since the Stone Age, is elevated in these images, and like his previous work, they strategically blur the line between pure documentary photography and painterly concerns.  RoseGallery’s exhibition marks the debut of Voyage en Egypte in the United States and is the first in-depth presentation of Esser’s work in Los Angeles.

Elger Esser was born in Stuttgart in 1967 and was raised in Rome.  In 1986, he moved to Dusseldorf, where he worked as a commercial photographer until 1991.  He then attended the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie, Studying with Bernd and Hilla Becher until 1997.  His work has been published in several monographs published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag including Vedutas and Landscapes, 2000; Elger Esser, Cap d’Antifer-Etretat, 2002; Anischten/Views/Vues, 2008; and Elger Esser, Eigenzeit,, 2009.  He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Kunstpreis der Stadt Dusselfdorf, Forderkoje Art Cologne, Friebe Gallery, and the Deutsches Studienzentrum Venedig.  Esser’s pictures are included in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Guggenheim Foundation; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Image: Elger Esser, Nil I, Ägypte, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and ROSEGALLERY, Los Angeles.

The view from The New Yorker’s photo department.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/10/lise-sarfati-she.html#ixzz1cTszmRF6

“Gina #12 Oakland, CA” (2009)

“Sloane #06 Oakland, CA” (2005)

“Christine #21 San Francisco, CA” (2005)

“Sasha #07 Phoenix, AZ” (2007)

“Christine #11 San Francisco, CA” (2005)

“Christine #13 Oakland, CA” (2009)

“Christine #10 Hollywood, CA” (2006)

“Sloane #66 Oakland, CA” (2009)

“Gina #24 Oakland, CA” (2007)

“Sloane #16 Oakland, CA” (2007)

“Sasha #20 Emeryville, CA” (2007)

“Sloane #62 Oakland, CA” (2007)

ROSEGALLERY

Booth C21

Grand Palais

Avenue Winston Churchill

75008 Paris

10th -13th November 2011

Grand Palais
Avenue Winston Churchill
75008 Paris

Dates: 10th -13th November 2011
Opening: 9 Nov. 2011 (by invitation only)

Hours:
Thursday 10 Nov. – Sunday 13 Nov.
noon – 8pm (7pm on Sunday)
Late opening on Friday: 9.30pm

Jessica Lange in Mexico

Lakeland, FL.- The Polk Museum of Art will display photographs from Jessica Lange’s Mexico portfolio in a new exhibition, “Jessica Lange: In Mexico,” which will run from September 17th through December 10th. Throughout the recent decades, as photography has been thrust onto the scene as a legitimate art form, photographers have increasingly defined themselves more personally. In Jessica Lange’s photography, art lovers witness a fusion of intimacy and curiosity. Far from reputations as mere journalists or commercial sentimentalists, photographers have become the eyes of the art world and the bridge between manual creation and technological production, and Lange is no exception.

She focuses on the personal side of contemporary photography. Although the images are unmistakably Mexican, this portfolio showcases more than glimpses into another culture; Lange successfully uses a photographer’s sensibilities to conjure a broad representation of her own experience.

Jessica Lange, a critically acclaimed and Oscar-winning actress, studied art at the University of Minnesota before launching a modeling and acting career. Her movie credits include “Tootsie” and “Blue Sky,” both of which earned her an Academy Award. She also has won four Golden Globes and an Emmy. In addition, she has received much attention in the art community of late as an emerging photographer and previously exhibited at the George Eastman House, the world’s oldest museum of photography. More recently, her photographs were exhibited at the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the Centro Niemeyer in Mexico City. The exhibition will be celebrated at a reception from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, September 16th, at the Museum.

Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, Florida, is a private, not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts in Central Florida. The Museum is one of the Top 10 art museums in the State of Florida, an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and the only art museum accredited by the American Association of Museums serving the 561,000 residents of Polk County. It was originally established by the Junior Welfare League in 1966 and called the Imperial Youth Museum. The museum was renamed Polk Public Museum in 1969 as part of its expanded focus on art, history, and science. The museum’s current name was adopted as part of its first building campaign in the 1980s. The museum currently displays art from the Pre-Columbian era through the contemporary, featuring hundreds of works each year in a variety of exhibits. These exhibits often revolve around a central theme or idea and link artworks from the ancient past with those of modern artists. Polk Museum boasts a permanent collection of over 2,500 works and a number of traveling exhibits which provide diverse displays that include American folk art, modern masters, japanese prints and textiles, african art, a permanent Pre-Columbian display, and much more. Visit the museum’s website at … www.PolkMuseumofArt.org.

AVILÉS: Jessica Lange estará en El Centro Niemeyer

El Centro Niemeyer, en colaboración con diChroma Photography (Madrid) y por cortesía de la Howard Greenberg Gallery (Nueva York), acogerá a partir del sábado 10 de  septiembre, día de la inauguración, la exposición ‘Unseen’, de la actriz y fotógrafa estadounidense Jessica Lange. La artista inaugurará oficialmente la muestra a las 19.00 horas.

La exposición reúne 78 fotografías, de las que doce son hojas de contactos, tomadas durante estos últimos veinte años, y se articula en dos series: ‘Things I See’ y ‘On scene – Unseen, Mexican Suites’.

La exposición se abrirá al público a partir del próximo domingo, 11 de septiembre, y las entradas estarán disponibles en las taquillas del Centro y a través del servicio TiquExpress de Cajastur.

Según informa el Centro, el precio de la entrada es de 3 Euros (50 por ciento de descuento a mayores de 65 años. Niños menores de 12 años, acompañados de un adulto, entrada gratuita). La exposición tendrá lugar en el Foyer del Auditorio del Centro Niemeyer, en el siguiente horario: de martes a domingo de 11.00 a 15.00 horas y de 17.00 a 21.00 horas.