Extended through June 30, 2018
About
Gagosian is pleased to present About Photography, an exhibition by artists, modern and contemporary, who have exhibited with the gallery over the past four decades.
About Photography explores the ways in which artists use photography as a medium, a means to an end, and a catalyst for other art forms. From Andy Warhol to Richard Prince, these artists open up the question of what it means to utilize the photographic medium for representation, as well as in the creation of form. As intellectual challenges continue to unfold, photography pervades not only all other artistic genres, but our every moment as well, a phenomenon that has irrevocably changed the nature of art itself.
The exhibition’s only sculpture, Duane Hanson’s Man with Camera (1991–92), takes center stage: a figure perched on a folding chair poises his camera to take a photograph. Celebrated for their startling realism, Hanson’s figures and the “snapshot of America” that they constitute take on new meaning in a photographic context. Nearby, Andy Warhol’s Screen Test of Edie Sedgwick (1965) is projected on the entrance wall. Richard Avedon’s portraits of Louis Armstrong (1955), Bob Dylan (1963), Malcolm X (1963), and members of Warhol’s Factory (1969–75) create an interlocking narrative about photography and society, contrasting with both the aesthetics and implications of Hanson’s figure.
Fifty years after Diane Arbus began shooting her unsettling black-and-white portraits of ordinary Americans on a medium-format Rolleiflex, producing distinctive, square photographs, Richard Prince’s Untitled (portrait) (2015) borrows the characteristic text and cropping of an Instagram post. An avid documenter and collector of American subcultures, Prince uses mass-media images to redefine concepts of ownership and authorship. Here, his examination of the contemporary channels and distribution of the photograph stands in stark contrast to Arbus’s iconic portraits, including Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J. (1966).
While Ed Ruscha’s deadpan series Vacant Lots (1970–2003) memorializes Los Angeles’s vernacular architecture, now largely overbuilt, the dissonance between nature and the incursion of commerce and popular culture is made evident in Andreas Gursky’s SH II (2014), in which a superhero sits alone in a desolate landscape.
#AboutPhotography
Deluxe Photo Book
Sydney Stutterheim discusses Chris Burden’s Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73 on the occasion of its inclusion in About Photography at Gagosian San Francisco.
Jeff Wall: In the Domain of Likeness
The Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, has staged a comprehensive Jeff Wall exhibition including more than fifty works spanning five decades. Here, Barry Schwabsky reflects on the enduring power of and mystery in Wall’s photography.
Douglas Gordon: To Sing
On the occasion of Douglas Gordon: All I need is a little bit of everything, an exhibition in London, curator Adam Szymczyk recounts his experiences with Gordon’s work across nearly three decades, noting the continuities and evolutions.
A Flat on Rue Victor-Considerant
Lee Miller and Tanja Ramm’s friendship took them from New York to Paris and back, in front of and behind many cameras, and into the Surrealist avant-garde. Here, Gagosian director Richard Calvocoressi speaks with Ramm’s daughter, art historian Margit Rowell, about discovering her mother’s early life, her memories of Miller, and the collaborative work of photographers and models.
to light, and then return—: A Night of Poetry with Edmund de Waal, Elisa Gonzalez, Terrance Hayes, and Sally Mann
Gagosian presented an evening of poetry inside to light, and then return—, an exhibition of new works by Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann, inspired by each other’s practices, at Gagosian, New York. In this video—taking the artists’ shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis as a point of departure—poets Elisa Gonzalez and Terrance Hayes read a selection of their recent works that resonate with the themes of elegy and historical reckoning in the show. The evening was moderated by Jonathan Galassi, chairman and executive editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Urs Fischer: Wave
In this video, Urs Fischer elaborates on the creative process behind his public installation Wave, at Place Vendôme, Paris.