calendario eventi  :: 

X

16/6/2015

Three exhibitions

Foley Gallery, New York

Sage Sohier’s: At Home With Themselves

Foley Gallery is very pleased to present Sage Sohier’s, At Home With Themselves, a series of domestic portraits of same-sex couples in 1980s America.

Next month’s Supreme Court ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges will determine the constitutional right and legality of same-sex unions, forever changing our political and social landscape. 30 years prior, photographer Sage Sohier began her groundbreaking project as a look into the predominantly private, yet prevalent domestic relationships of gay and lesbian couples.

At Home With Themselves began in 1986 when the AIDS crisis was affecting countless lives across the country and same-sex relationships were still held as discreet. Sohier reflects, “I was interested in how as a culture, we weren’t used to looking at two men touching, and was struck by the visual novelty yet total ordinariness of these same-sex relationships.” Sohier was initially motivated by her father’s own discreet homosexual relationship and navigation of the gay community. It was her impassioned curiosity that led her to discover the world that her father was already beginning to explore.

In the 1980s, the project was so culturally edgy, it was impossible to find a publisher let alone a wide enough audience who would be willing to accept its truth. Nearly 30 years later, her work is especially poignant in the context of today’s world where the social acceptance of same-sex unions has changed. Sohier says, “Looking at these pictures now, I realize that it took a good deal more courage to stand up and be photographed as a same-sex couple in the 1980s than it does today, and I think the photographs somehow convey that. In some, there’s a tentativeness, in others a kind of not-to-be-taken-for-granted raw tenderness. People in my father’s generation had grown up feeling that being openly gay was just not an acceptable option. In my generation that began to change, and I was grateful to be witness to it”.

----

Leon Borensztein: American Portraits 1979-1989

Borensztein first immigrated to the United States from Israel in the late 1970s and initially worked as a traveling portrait photographer throughout the environs of San Francisco. Commercial portrait sessions would be set-up by eager salesmen, sending Borensztein across California, making up to 30 portraits a day of people in their homes. While photographing put-on smiles in color for his employer, he decided to make his own photographs in black & white, pulling far enough away from the backdrop to reveal the interior room, the domestic life of his sitter(s). With clear directions not to smile, “the masks on their faces vanished.” Eventually, he traveled across the country, meeting his customers in public spaces, economically covering more subjects at a time.

During his travels, it became clear to him that the “American Dream” he longed for himself was also a dream that he shared with his subjects. But, like his own life, the realities of these mostly working class families wore away at the possibility. A loneliness and isolation emanated from his subjects. As in the portraits of Arkansas’s Mike Disfamer and Germany’s August Sander before, Borensztein’s photographs reveal what his subjects really look like and not necessarily what they want to be.

Although his subjects didn’t know one another, they seem like they are a part of the same community, trying to present themselves in the “right” way. They are on the same social level, having the same concerns, ambitions and sharing similar living conditions as one another. Borensztein’s use of a simple and consistent backdrop equalizes their status. But, by revealing their immediate surroundings, the opportunity to be seen as something other than they are vanishes. When the backdrop gets put a way and the photographer pulls into his next town, their lives go back to normal. By subtly shifting how much is portrayed, Borensztein reinterprets the construction of the American identity.

----

Delicate Creatures

Foley Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of Delicate Creatures, a gathering of fine, fragile and sensitively created works by artists Peter Callesen, Lauren Henkin, Seth Koen, Christian Maychack, Morgan O’Hara, Abigail Reynolds, Kate Russo and Simon Schubert.

Delicate Creatures showcases the works of eight contemporary artists connected by the thread of the delicate nature of their material, application and object-presence. Together, these works occupy a sublime two- and three-dimensional space, touching both painting and sculpture.

Peter Callesen’s paper cut sculptures are meticulously shaped and folded from a single sheet of A4. Daydreams of mortality, peril and escape come forth from the page. Similarly, Simon Schubert creates architectural space, often creating the false perception of light, by folding and creasing a single sheet of paper.

Christian Maychack’s work provokes a relationship between painting and sculpture. Surface becomes a place, the point at which physical, sculptural, abstract, and pictorial interests intersect; Maychack’s addition of color connects them all. Abigail Reynolds appropriates, splices, and layers photographs and illustrations of famous monuments to span time and our experience within it.

Kate Russo’s work considers the ability of color and pattern repetition to tell a story – to create a setting, an atmosphere and dialogue within each work. Using gridded lines of graph paper as her template, she makes repetitive markings with colored pencil, expressing the relationship between color and obsession, personality and memory. Seth Koen’s whimsical sculptures are bound by the limits of physicality, especially gravity – his exploration of this and subsequent problem solving.

Lauren Henkin’s new paintings explore the beauty of simplicity with delicate brush strokes and muted colors. Finally, Morgan O’Hara’s work observes and renders visible aspects of the experience of living through her performative drawing. She will have a site-specific installation in the storefront window.

Image: Sage Sohier

Opening: June 17, 6-8pm

Foley Gallery
59 Orchard Street, New York
Wed - Sun 12pm to 6pm

stampa

permanent link