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Lynn
Geesaman
New
Work
January
8 – March 6,
2004
Lynn
Geesaman is highly acclaimed for her dramatic images of public and private
gardens from around the world. Lines, spirals, curves, and triangles define
space in an exploration of the symmetry and geometry of nature. Her unique
printing technique lends a diffused softness and subtle color to the elegant
simplicity of her compositions. This exquisite rendering of idealized landscapes
typifies her signature style.
Her work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States and in
Europe. It appears in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum
of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston,
and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and many private collections.
Lynn Geesaman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from Wellesley
College with a degree in physics. She travels extensively to gardens worldwide.
She presently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
This
exhibit features color photographs from Lynn Geesaman's recent excursions
to Mexico and Spain, as well as selected images from previous series.
Notable in this new imagery is her treatment of architectural elements
and a strikingly vibrant and saturated color palette. Her
new monograph "Gardenscapes", published by Aperture
in conjunction with the exhibition, will be available for purchase. |
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Louis Faurer
New York 40s - 60s
March 11 -
May 8, 2004
Louis Faurer
photographed street life in Philadelphia and New York after World War
II, and then later in Paris. His images of people, alone as well as
in groups, offers a sensitive portrayal of the human condition during
the three decades that he photographed. Using reflections and a variety
of skilled printing techniques including double exposure and sandwiched
negatives Faurer created images that captured the energy, complexity
and uncertainty of his surroundings.
Faurer worked as
a freelance graphic artist in his hometown of Philadelphia before moving
to New York in the early 1940s. He purchased his first camera in 1937
and within two years launched his career as a fashion and editorial
photographer. During his career Faurer was hired by some of the most
influential fashion magazines of the day, including Harper’s Bazaar,
Vogue, Flair, Mademoiselle, and Glamour. However, it was his personal
work of people on the cities’ streets that gained the attention
of critics, curators, and other artists. |
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Ida Wyman
Los
Angeles 40s - 50s
March 11 - May 8, 2004
Ida Wyman started shooting at the age of sixteen while
working at Acme News Pictures in New York City. After showing her work
to various national magazine editors, she began freelancing with the
likes of LIFE, Fortune, The New York Times, and many others.
Wyman photographs everyday people and is inspired by their stories,
which she says satisfies her “immense curiosity to learn and understand
the lives of others, lives different in experience and age from my own.”
In the past, Wyman explained the emotional and intellectual aspects
of her craft as, “Pure light and its resulting shadows…made
me feel a special synchrony somewhere deep inside, in an unknown place…a
special kind of happiness.” Wyman’s work engages the emotional
realm of the mundane world with a kind of secret respect and awe for
the beauty, which surrounds our everyday lives.
Wyman’s work has been exhibited in private galleries across the
United States, and is part of the collections of the Museum of Modern
Art in New York City, the Photo Collection of the New York Public Library,
and other institutions throughout the U.S.
Wyman currently lives in the Bronx in New York City. |
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Four Views
Louise Parsons
Geoffrey Fricker
William Wylie
Larry Schwarm
May 13 - July 3, 2004 |
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Edmund Teske
Images out of Time
July
8- August 28, 2004
Running concurrent with the J. Paul Getty Museum
retrospective, the Stephen Cohen Gallery features a wide range of Teske’s
work, stretching from early black-and-white documentary images of street
scenes and found objects, to impressionistic red-grey-brown duotone
solarizations, to his signature surreal images that beautifully blur
the lines between reality and fantasy. A pioneering visual artist, Teske
was born in Chicago in 1911, where his childhood interest in photography
grew into a 60-year pursuit of artistic freedom. His early training
at Taliesin with Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s offered Teske important
early inspiration from the master himself, and new ways of thinking
about and seeing art.
After moving to Hollywood in 1943, Teske’s work took a unique
turn. A contemporary of photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Berenice Abbott,
Paul Strand, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Teske distinguished himself by
his experimental alchemy in the darkroom as much as by his visual acuity
behind the lens. Mixing various concentrations of photo chemicals and
then blasting intense concentrations of light onto high-contrast paper,
Teske created dramatic color stains and streaking effects. The results
of this imaginative, one-of-a-kind solarization process give many of
Teske’s images a smoky, burnt umber, atmospheric quality where
the image looks more like a tonal painting than a photograph.
Teske's deepening interest in Hindu Vedantic philosophy (which affirms
the oneness of existence, divinity of the soul, and harmony of religions)
is reflected in his increased experimentation with composite printing
techniques (the sandwiching of multiple negatives), which characterized
his mature work. These extraordinary unique, surreal photographs reconfigure
our conventional ideas about time and space into a new visual and emotional
reality.
His photographs are in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum,
LACMA, Museum of Modern Art (NY), San Francisco MOMA, Norton Simon Museum,
and the Boston Museum of Fine Art among others. From his abstractions
and portraits of the Hollywood glitterati (including Jim Morrison of
the Doors), to figure studies and architectural tributes to mentor Frank
Lloyd Wright, Teske’s versatile work transforms our visual perceptions.
A new Getty publication, "Spirit into Matter: the Photographs of
Edmund Teske" by Julian Cox, will be available at the gallery on
opening night. |
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Ken Merfeld
Wet-Plate Collodion Photographs
July
8- August 28, 2004
In conjunction with
Edmund Teske: Images Out of Time, in the main gallery, the
Stephen Cohen Gallery will be exhibiting a group of stunning portraits
by Ken Merfeld in the viewing room.
"I enjoy the challenge of a single defining exposure revealing
a new level of intimacy, truth and depth to my world of portraiture." An acute awareness of the ever-increasing demands on peoples' public
and private lives in today's digital, virtual, global world, led Ken
Merfeld to immerse himself in an obsolete 19th century process used
by some of photography's master artists. Merfeld's haunting wet collodion
portraits are revelations of the heart. Polar opposites of the digitized
futurism that has become easy viewing in our new visual language, the
artist lets the process, the sitter and the photographer create a defining
moment of intimacy and truth. |
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Tracey
Snelling
Last
Picture Show
September
9th - November 6th, 2004
Influenced by film, landscape, books, and architecture, Snelling’s
work references both popular culture and history. A photograph of an
actual building can lead to a sculpture of that building which, in turn,
is photographed once again. The scale of her work continually grows
and shrinks, mutating and distorting each time. The psychological aspects
of shelter, home, doors and windows allow her to explore many subjects
on another level. The structures are made from various materials, including
wood, appropriated images, luminescent wire, small lights, and metal.
Some contain sound, water, or motors for movement. The structures are
photographed with a large format camera; the insides of the rooms are
sometimes lit with flashlights and are then blended into the outside
environment using similar camera techniques to those utilized in old
films, such as “The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman”.
Her photographs are featured in the collections of the Museum of Fine
Arts in Houston, Texas, de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara, California,
the Microsoft Collection in Redmond, Washington and the Progressive
Collection in Cleveland, Ohio.
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Graciela
Sacco
Outside
September
9th - November 10th, 2004
Photographer, video and installation artist. Graciela Sacco works with heliography,
the chemical action of light on emulsified photosensitive surfaces,
has taken the technique to the forefront of contemporary art. The artist's
strong socio-political photographic images serve as metaphors for some
of the most acute problems of contemporary society such as famine, homelessness,
authoritarianism, poor education, corrupt governments and officials,
gun violence, crime, etc. Heliography is commonly, commercially, used
in the development of architectural blue prints. Through her own investigations,
Sacco created an anti-orthodox method of developing the heliographic
image. Through her manipulated heliography technique, Sacco is able
to transfer her original or appropriated photographic images onto a
wide range of supports: from paper and canvas to rubber, leather, wood,
glass, stone, cardboard, plastic and metal.
Sacco’s images can be seen in the public Collections of the Bronx
Museum of the Arts in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and
the Museum of Art in Ft. Lauderdale. |
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Han Nguyen
NEW WORK
November 11 – December 24
The exhibit with Han
Nguyen highlight the sensuous exploration of self and body,
as captured by this world renowned San Diego-based artist. The exhibits
features self-portraits of Nguyen taken with a pinhole camera, printed
in an elegant circular soft focus format; and unique collages pieced
together from color photographs, all referencing the body, that are
humorous, sensuous and curious.
Born
in Hue, Vietnam in 1956, Nguyen immigrated to the United States in 1975
and settled in San Diego, California where he currently lives and works.
Largely self-taught, his creativity takes place primarily in a studio
where he utilizes parts of his body, including his arms, legs and torso,
to deliver large-scale, transcendent photographs filled with emotion.
The artist’s gaze, when turned upon himself, in its specificity
becomes a universal gaze encompassing past, present and future.
Nguyen has always referenced his body; it being the one durable always
present thing in his life; thus he is never without a starting point,
inspiration, and a deep understanding of the thing he is acquainted
with the best. This new exhibition is a continuation of earlier explorations
of the body, another step down a path that is a sensuous investigation
into being and existence, classless, without country unencumbered by
language and culture.
His photographs are featured in the collections of the Museum of Photographic
Arts in San Diego, California, Sheldon Memorial Gallery at the University
of Nebraska-Lincoln, Key Corporation Art Collection and the Nash Edition
Collection, as well as several private Collections.
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