Shannon Ebner
dal 14/2/2013 al 22/3/2013
Segnalato da
14/2/2013
Shannon Ebner
Wallspace Gallery, New York
A Language of Exposures. The exhibition underscores her interest in spaces that depict at the same time as they generate new visual systems where the photographic meets the graphic and the linguistic meets the symbolic.
Wallspace is pleased to present A Language of Exposures, our fourth solo
exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Shannon Ebner.
A Language of Exposures underscores Ebner’s interest in photography’s ability
to address spaces outside of the camera’s frame; spaces that depict at the
same time as they generate new visual systems where the photographic meets the
graphic and the linguistic meets the symbolic. Here, one is asked to read as
much as look at this work. This conflation of reading and looking generates a
lexicon of letters and forms that moves in and out of legibility: words and
sentences divide, gaps sit heavily on the page, and alphabetical arrangements
and symbols fuse, break apart, and reunite, altering our perceptual
experiences of them.
Ebner approaches language much like a photographer approaches his or her
subject; words, letters and symbols are assessed, gathered, documented and
deployed for use. Because Ebner frequently combines found words with phrases
of her own, she creates a third type of language. This notion of a third term,
one that resists traditional binaries and argues for a kind of in-between
space, is best articulated in a video titled An Unrested Image, in which a
classical image of a rotating and stammering torso suggests a resistant
grammar that is neither male nor female, formed nor unformed.
The largest component of the show is an 18-part piece titled the man in the
white hat dropped it. In this work, Ebner scavenges language originally found
in a book of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings to re-generate a poem in visual
form; words and line breaks are marked by blank spaces engineered to build a
formal system for photographic and visual writing somewhere between pattern
and noise. As such, the physicality of language is foregrounded, providing an
illusory body for the poem’s absent subject.
In Instrumentals, Ebner continues to explore nascent photographic form.
Photographing a workshop template for tools that she found in an auto-body
shop, Ebner locates the meeting of the photographic and the graphic. The
template, when stripped from its context and everyday use, suggests a
foundation or visual primer for building an elemental photographic form much
like her alphabet prototypes. Wild and pliable, this image suggests the
endless possibility for two overlapping systems—that of language and
photography—to form and re-form itself in perpetuity.
Shannon Ebner was born in Englewood, NJ in 1971 and lives and works in Los
Angeles. She holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Yale University
School of Art. Ebner has exhibited widely, including Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps
of Language, The Museum of Modern Art (2012); The 54th Venice Biennale (2011);
Shannon Ebner, The Hammer Museum & LAXART, Los Angeles (2011); The 6th Berlin
Biennale for Contemporary Art (2010); Upcoming projects include a commission
for the High Line (2013); a solo exhibition at Sadie Coles, London (2013) and
Fondazione Memmo, Rome (2014).
Please contact Nichole Caruso to request images or further information nichole@wallspacegallery.com (212) 594-9478.
Opening reception February 15th from 6 – 8 pm
Wallspace Gallery
619 West 27th Street New York, NY 10001
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm.