Zoe Leonard
dal 30/11/2007 al 16/2/2008
Segnalato da
30/11/2007
Zoe Leonard
Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur
Photographs. This exhibition presents her complete oeuvre since the late 1970s. Leonard's predominantly black-and-white photographs are like a blurred cartography of the human condition. Her idiosyncratic gaze finds photographs that are subversive in their questioning, casual in their approach, incisive in what they reveal; the subject matter and the theme are combined in their entirety, until they are almost melded together.
Curator: Urs Stahel
For more than twenty years, the American artist Zoe Leonard (born in 1961, in Liberty, New York) has been practicing the art of the contemplative journey and the perceptive gaze. She trawls through nature and culture, through the (urban) landscape and the world of museums, in search of signs that might give some insight into their contrasts, similarities and inter-relationships.
In her photographs, as we look down at the Niagara Falls, we see the rushing waters pour into a massive cleft in the earth’s crust; we see railway tracks sweeping across the globe; we see the patterns of modern urban existence, work and life pressed into right angles and tubes. We find ourselves looking at maps and anatomical models, peering into showcases, museums and shops, watching the gender struggle, the structure of thought and memory, made aware of the balance between photographic material and photographic seeing.
Zoe Leonard’s predominantly black-and-white photographs are like a blurred cartography of the human condition. Her idiosyncratic gaze finds photographs that are subversive in their questioning, casual in their approach, incisive in what they reveal; they are photographs that are cast aside and later reprised until the point at which the form of the photographic image is resolved. In other words, until the view, the subject matter and the theme are combined in their entirety, until they are almost melded together.
Zoe Leonard has twice been selected to exhibit at the prestigious documenta, in Kassel, Germany, in 1992 and 2007.
This exhibition of the Fotomuseum Winterthur is the first to present Zoe Leonard’s complete oeuvre since the late 1970s. The accompanying book published by Steidl includes texts by Svetlana Alpers, Elisabeth Lebovici and Urs Stahel. Curator of the exhibition: Urs Stahel.
Main sponsor of exhibition and book: Hulda und Gustav Zumsteg-Stiftung, Zürich
Sunday, 2 December 2007, 11.30 a.m.: Public talk with Zoe Leonard (in Englisch)
Publication: "Zoe Leonard – Photographs". Edited by Urs Stahel, published at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Steidl, Göttingen. With texts by Svetlana Alpers, Elisabeth Lebovici and Urs Stahel. 264 pages, 134 Triton- and 73 colour illustrations, format 24 x 30 cm, Hardcover with dust jacket. Price: CHF 65.-
Main Gallery + Gallery
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Until 10 February 2007 (Collection rooms):
The Stamp of Fantasy - The Visual Inventiveness of Photographic Postcards
Press photography, photo books, photographic objects, photographic postcards: the way we look at these many different forms of photography is undergoing a sea change. The exhibition The Stamp of Fantasy takes a look at the postcards that brought photography to the masses, as the precursors of the illustrated press and the illustrated book.
From 1900 onwards, picture postcards enjoyed enormous popularity. In addition to urban scenes and village views, postcard publishers also began issuing more entertaining images: greetings cards and April Fool’s Day cards, illustrations of proverbs, imaginary, witty or even erotic scenes. In designing these visual curiosities, the photographers deployed a wide range of technical devices – montage, double exposure, optical distortion, close-up etc. The exhibition examines the remarkably playful visual approach taken by the postcard industry in the early decades of the twentieth century, and discusses it in the context of the avantgarde photography at that time.
The exhibition presents more than 500 postcards in large-scale projections, in showcases and in frames, mostly from the collections of Gérard Lévy and Peter Weiss, as well as selected works by Jean Arp, Johannes Theodor Baargeld, Giacomo Balla, Herbert Bayer, Hans Bellmer, Erwin Blumenfeld, André Breton, Paul Citroën, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Hannah Höch, André Kertész, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, Dora Maar and many others.
Curator of the exhibition is Clément Chéroux (photographic historian amd curator of the photographic collection at the Centre Pompidou, Paris). The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Museum Folkwang in Essen and the Jeu de Paume in Paris. It is accompanied by a book published by Steidl Verlag.
For further information and press material, please contact Fotomuseum Winterthur, Therese Seeholzer, seeholzer@fotomuseum.ch, Tel. +41 (0)52 234 10 63, Fax +41 (0)52 233 60 97
Image: Zoe Leonard, Must Sell All, 2000/2006. From the Dye Transfer portfolio "Analogue" Dye Transfer print, 28 x 28 cm Courtesy Tracy Williams Ltd., New York, and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne © Zoe Leonard
Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44+45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Opening hours: Tue - Sun 11am - 6pm, Wed 11am - 8pm, closed on Mondays
Closed on 24, 25 and 31 December 2007 and on 1 January 2008.