Ian Umlauf
dal 25/5/2012 al 15/6/2012
Segnalato da
25/5/2012
Ian Umlauf
Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica
Fearful Symmetries. Dead Drive-Ins: series of drawings in which Umlauf appropriates aerial satellite imagery of defunct, abandoned drive-in movie theaters; An Incident in the Park: 17 black and white contact prints, each re-representing a photograph from Antonioni's Blow-Up.
The work of Brooklyn-based artist Ian Umlauf has ranged significantly in media and content over the last several years. What unifies the body of work presented in Fearful Symmetries is the artist's ongoing investigation of mediated imagery as it interrupts, envelops, and melds with the viewer's subjective spaces, both physical and psychological.
In his series of drawings, Dead Drive-Ins, Umlauf appropriates aerial satellite imagery of defunct, abandoned drive-in movie theaters. Initiated by a floating, technological eye, and traversing an intangible series of digital and analog translations, the images finally arrive as ink on paper landscapes. What is ultimately at stake in this sped-up American archaeology is the information loss that is entailed in cultural amnesia.
17 Photographs, or An Incident in the Park consists of 17 black and white contact prints, each re-representing a photograph from Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up. In co-authoring the protagonist's blown-up snapshots from a casual weekend outing, Umlauf confounds the public and private, the abstract and representational, and most pointedly, the original and copy.
Perhaps the most playful and intuitive works in the exhibit, the collectively titled MR/DEcollages employ found photographs in reconfigured, formalized settings that serve to heighten the peculiarities of the photographs' subjects, while interrupting the original narrative flow in often surreal and comical ends.
In his recent, ongoing teparu project, Umlauf uses discarded hollow-core doors as his primary medium. By cutting and reorganizing the doors into new configurations, and integrating inkjet prints and found posters into the mix, the artist challenges the viewer to adjust, reconsider, and adapt their relationship to simple objects and imagery.
As Umlauf states, "By forcing certain formal relationships between ungrounded images and their hybrid supports--often based on mirroring, overlaying, and duplicating–the works propose a series of visual conundrums, gradually unfolding in time, but ultimately reflecting in on themselves."
Opening Sat May 26 6-9pm
Track 16 Gallery
Bergamot Station C1, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica
admission by appointment