calendario eventi  :: 

X

10/11/2010

Stephen Shore / Robert Morris

Spruth Magers, Berlin

STEPHEN SHORE. UNCOMMON PLACES

Sprüth Magers Berlin is delighted to present work by Stephen Shore in his first solo show in Berlin for over 15 years. The exhibition will feature 80 previously unseen works from the series Uncommon Places, in addition to a number of pages from his seminal Road Trip Journal.

A self-taught photographer, Stephen Shore began his career in 1961, at the early age of fourteen, when he presented and sold his photographs to Edward Steichen, then curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art. Shortly afterwards, from 1965 to 1967, Shore spent much of his time photographing Andy Warhol and his entourage at the Factory. Through Shore’s early exposure to Warhol he was able to absorb the New York Art Scene and produce spontaneous snapshots of famous performers such as Edie Sedgwick and Lou Reed, using an unintimidating hand-held camera, which developed the artist’s intuition for capturing the unmediated, fleeting moment as one that might become part of a timeless cultural narrative. In 1971, he became the first living photographer to have a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Shore embarked on his first road trip in the summer of 1972 which resulted in the series American Surfaces. With a Rollei 35 mm camera, the forerunner of the point-and-shoot, Shore was able to immediately capture the people, places and objects he encountered, producing a series of consciously casual and intimate snapshots. Embracing the work of the Conceptual artists of the 1960s who adopted the photographic medium as a tool to make systematic, often compulsive explorations of locations, Shore too began to assemble a sequential visual record of his travels in which the singular photograph was only significant in terms of its place in the series. Shore opted for the mass-produced amateurish method of printing his colour, glossy photographs at a Kodak lab in the standard 3 by 5 inch format, favoured by tourists.

While Shore continued to document his travels, he wanted to explore a greater visual intentionality and, therefore, began his next series of work in 1973 entitled Uncommon Places. Here the artist focuses on the minutiae of modern life in America, capturing anonymous intersections, residential architecture, uniform drive-by diners, generic motel rooms and monotonous gas stations, all of which were shot using colour film and a view camera, a combination that had rarely been put to use in recording America’s social landscape. The artist’s move towards a tripod-bound, larger format, 8 by 10 inch, view camera was fuelled by the rigorous nature of the equipment which allows for ‘clarity of thought’ whilst one makes a conscious, premeditated decision to take a photograph. Furthermore, by employing this method, which immediately eliminates spontaneity, Shore could now capture every precise detail within the carefully framed scene, such as the red bicycle apparent in the distance of 4th and Main, Delphos, OH, July 6, 1973. The artist’s increasing interest in the linear construction and symmetrical organization of his motifs is evident in the work, Anderson Heating Co., 2nd St, Ashland, W1, July 9, 1973 in which the strong horizontal structure of the centrally placed building is repeated throughout the scene.

The rich, elaborate palette used throughout the series, which was shocking to the audience at the time, added the visual accuracy and heightened awareness that Shore needed to depict his ordinary contemporary subjects. In 1971 colour photography was not welcome in the realm of high-art photography as it was commonly used by commercial photographers, depicted in advertising or seen on the television. Through the repetitive use of the acid yellow & vinyl red billboards depicted in Main Street, Twin Falls, Idaho, July 19, 1973, Shore is able to illuminate the generic artefacts of contemporary culture with his rebellious use of colour.

Previously unpublished photographs from Uncommon Places will be assembled together in the exhibition, allowing the viewer to explore the artist’s movements and enter the specific place he has defined. In addition to his visual account of his time on the road, Shore also kept a journal with him during his first journeys for Uncommon Places, producing a daily written record of his car mileage, meals eaten, programs watched on television, motel bills and picture postcards of towns, surreptitiously marking his drive-by visits. Examples of Shore’s meticulous record of daily activities can be seen in his book, entitled Road Trip Journal, pages of which are featured in the exhibition. Through his compilation of data and bills, Shore strove for objectivity by enumerating his daily activities while recounting how much money he spent, devoid of sentiment or nostalgia. His Road Trip Journal further marks the transition from an untutored, unmediated record to a more mechanical and analytical way of presenting time.

Additional works from Uncommon Places and American Surfaces are concurrently on show at the NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf as part of the exhibition Biographical Landscape. The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1968-1993. The second part of the exhibition, also currently on show at the NRW-Forum, entitled ‘Der Rote Bulli: Stephen Shore and the New Düsseldorf Photography’, explores how Stephen Shore’s unique use of colour film and view camera has influenced a generation of photographers including Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth & Candida Höfer amongst many others, all of whom were exposed to his work by Bernd and Hilla Becher while studying at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf.

Stephen Shore was born in 1947 in New York City and currently lives in Tivoli, New York. He is the Director of the Photography Program at Bard College. Solo shows include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1971), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1976), Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf (1977), Ringling Museum, Sarasota (1981), Art Institute of Chicago (1984), Sprengel Museum, Hannover (1995) & SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne (1999). Group exhibitions include Barbican Gallery, London (1985), Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (1987), National Gallery, Washington (1989), J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (1997), Whitney Museum, New York (1999), Victoria & Albert Museum, London (1999), Tate Modern, London (2003).

Stephen Shore has been a recipient of a number of major awards over the course of his career, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1975 and the National Endowments for the Arts Fellowship in 1974 & 1979.

---------------------------

ROBERT MORRIS. BLIND TIME (GRIEF)

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present new drawings by Robert Morris in Berlin. The exhibition will feature twelve works from the series Blind Time (Grief) that were achieved in 2009 and are the latest manifestations of Morris' seminal Blind Time Drawings.

Robert Morris began work on the first group of Blind Time Drawings in 1973 which comprised ninety-eight sheets. The subsequent groups, up to the latest series, are less comprehensive, but even so, the ensemble constitutes one of the largest bodies of works created by an artist blindfolded.

In the first instance the titles describe the way in which the drawings were made: with closed eyes. Through the use of a mixture of graphite or powdered pigments and oil, Morris left traces of his fingers and hands on the paper. Bringing these works close to the genre of the ‘task performance’, each drawing was based on an assignment of tasks which were previously defined and written out at the bottom of the sheet afterwards.

The task of one of the the first drawings of the Blind Time I works (1973) reads as follows:

‘With eyes closed, graphite on the hands and estimating a lapsed time of 3 minutes, both hands attempt to descend the page with identical touching motions in an effort to keep to an even vertical column of touches. Time estimation error: +8 seconds.’

A single session, a program, measurement, discrepancy, error: all these elements were decisive in the production of these works.

Dating from 1976, the Blind Time II series diverged markedly from all the others. For this sub-ensemble, Morris recruited a woman who had been blind from birth, she made the drawings under his direction. The following series Blind Time III (1985) – Blind Time VI (2000) then evinced different traces of orientation by keeping the overall same operational procedure of the first body of work.

While the works of the last series, Blind Time V (1999) and Blind Time VI (2000), relate to the artist’s past and to events in his personal life, the drawings of Blind Time (Grief) articulate the artist’s anger and frustration with the political establishment and the post 9/11 crusades lead by the US which represent a collective disillusioned state of mind and a sense of war weariness.

As for the work Blind Time IV (Grief) the artist defines the following situation and task:

‘Given: the page, the black, the red, the secure blindfold, the three marked off areas, the numbers, and 8 years of US military aggression in the Middle East, during which time the interventionist strategy has moved from a declared intention to establish a new world order to a global war on terror to counter-insurgency.

Working blindfolded with burnt sienna touches are made in the upper area while thinking of the uncounted civilian deaths resulting from the conflict. Then with mars black the hands attempt to count off some 3000 touches in the estimated marked off areas while thinking of the US military deaths. Before reaching this number I lose count and the mars black is depleted.’

The appearance of the works evoke a variety of associations in the given context. By using the colours ‘burnt sienna’ as well as ‘mars black’ in all of the works and the gestural landscapes Morris creates, abstract theatres of war seem to be reflected.

For their visual variety, achieved with the greatest economy of means, and for the richness of the questions they raise, the Blind Time Drawings constitute a monument in the field of art. In this tradition, the works of the Blind Time (Grief) series add a state of backpedalling to the seminal body of work by making up the balance of the campaigns on the ‘war on terror‘.

Robert Morris was born 1931 and is one of the most important American artists of the post-war generation. Highly influenced by Abstract Expressionism, he developed an interest in the relationship between art, gesture and the body which resulted in groundbreaking minimal sculptures using a variety of media such as lead, plaster and felt. Morris was deeply involved in the Judson Church dance scene where he participated in performances by Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti. By inventing and trying out new modes of work, Morris has created a comprehensive, complex and highly influential oeuvre over the past five decades.

Morris‘ work has been represented in numerous museum solo exhibitions including New York‘s Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970, the Art Institute of Chicago in 1980, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art in 1986 and Washington D.C.‘s Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1990. In 1994 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York organised a major retrospective of the artist‘s work which traveled to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and the Musée National d‘Art Moderne in Paris. From November 2009 until May 2010 the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach showed the exhibition Robert Morris. Notes on Scupture - Objects, Installations, Films. The artist‘s works were shown at documenta 6 (1977) and 8 (1987) and were included in the group exhibition of the Venice biennial in 1978 and 1980. Morris is Professor at the New York Hunter College.

For further information and press inquiries please contact Jan Salewski
js@spruethmagers.com

Image: Stephen Shore

Opening 11 November 2010, 6 - 9pm

Monika Spruth Philomene Magers
Oranienburger Str. 18, Berlin
Opening Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 6 pm
free admission

stampa

permanent link