civilized ku # 848-51 ~ pictures to the left, pictures to the right
Friday, February 11, 2011 at 10:23AM 
Aperture Gallery ~ Chelsea, NYC • click to embiggen
3 exhibits - Italian Gardens / reGeneration2 / Light Cities ~ Chelsea, NYC • click to embiggenAs mentioned, my visit to the Chelsea gallery district was enjoyable and informative.
The enjoyable part came from seeing exhibits such as Lawrence Beck's Italian Gardens, Aperture Gallery's reGeneration2, David Stephenson's Light Cities (Nocturnes take note), Andy Warhol's Big Shots, O. Winston Link: The Last Stream Railroad in America, McDermott & McGough's Of Beauty and Being, and a truly weird exhibit (but, IMO, interesting only if you don't think of it as photography) - Kahn & Selesnick's MARS: ADRIFT ON THE HOURGLASS SEA.
Some items of note:
Beck's Italian Gardens pictures are flat out gorgeous. Their visual beauty, to my eye and sensibilities, derives from the fact that I could immediately identify that the pictures / prints were made with/from film. The look is unmistakable to the trained and appreciative eye - especially so in the manner in which the beyond-dynamic-range highlight values roll off so smoothly. At $20,000 a pop, they are also BIG - they might be just the right size for the Sonnabend's gallery walls but I question their suitability for home display in all but the most palatial abodes.
The Warhol BIG SHOTS exhibit - little Polaroid 108 pictures of VIPs, aka: "big shots" - was very nice. Again, the visual look of the Polaroid prints tickles my eye and sensibilities. The big issue with these prints - $10,000-$16,000 a pop - is simply, how long will they last. No one at the gallery would venture a guess.
McDermott & McGough's Of Beauty and Being exhibit was visually eye-watering. The color prints were made using the nearly extinct tri color carbon print process. Tri color carbo prints can exhibit virtually every visual color and an unimaginable range of hue and saturation. In the case of this exhibit's prints, the color was (quite intentionally) intensely vibrant - retina- searing vibrant. Relative to the intent of the picture makers, this approach worked beautifully.
My gallery crawl, coming as it did on the heels of the Protect Your Prints workshop, revealed an interesting bit of information - there were a lot of prints displayed with no glazing and no surface protection measures of any kind employed.
All of the prints - pigmented ink on cotton rag paper mounted on white plexi with wood brace backing - in Stephenson's Light Cities (the triptych pictured above would set you back $22,500) were displayed without glazing and/or print surface protection of any kind. When I was overheard asking a gallery employee about how these prints were surface/UV protected, the gallery director nearly jumped out of her desk chair - and nearly out of her skin - and immediately and somewhat emphatically stated that the prints were strictly for exhibition. Purchased prints would have to be framed.
It would seem that some picture makers / galleries have come to the same conclusion as I have, re: print display vs. print protection - display them without glazing and leave the print protection / preservation issue of purchased prints (non-display prints) to the buyer.
That is unless you make tri color carbo prints which are rated to last at least 300-400 years. Some claim, with good reason, that carbo prints can last, literally, forever.
BTW, I've stated it before and I'll state it again - a trip to the photo gallery epicenter of the world, NYC (in general) and the Chelsea Photo District (in particular), should be at the top of any serious picture maker's "accessory" list. The opportunity to see such a wide and impressive display of pictures in one location - yes, it's a BIG location - is a unique and rewarding experience that can open your eyes to a myriad and diverse array of picture viewing and insight.
While I viewed an interesting group of exhibits in just one afternoon, I merely scratched the surface of the gallery crawling opportunities. 4-5 days of gallery crawling just might be enough to put a decent dent into the seeming endless possibilities.
Reader Comments (1)
Visting galleries such as this is, sadly, beyond my means at this time. Thanks for letting me live vicariously through you instead. :-)