Olga Chagaoutdinova

08 (2004)

"The transition from socialism to capitalism in the last seventeen years has made russia a member of the global community. Economic changes have profoundly impacted upon the lives of the people: what they appreciate, what they value, all have changed. the goal of this project is to explore the visual evidence of a culture in transition. The photographic study focuses on aesthetics, iconographic resurgence and cultural transformation. alterations in living space juxtapose ironies of advertising. Personal history is recontextualized by russia’s collision with modern capitalism. Not only does east meet west in these photos, but eastern and western values clash, deconstruct, and reframe. In the photographic images, each home, each personal space, provides an opportunity for insight into cultural traditions, their persistence and their transformation. Each home reflects economic realism and mirrors emerging political values. In this way, home can be seen as a microcosm of the macro-changes in modern russian culture. russian pictures is an ongoing project."

-Olga Chagaoutdinova

Text taken from Olga Chagaoutdinova

David Corona

Marea 2 (2009)

Robert Polidori

Salles d’Afrique, Painting of Louis XVI by Callet (2007)

"Considered one of the leading photographers of our time, Polidori transcends the limits of photography and captures traces of the human condition—paradoxically, in places that have usually been abandoned and are devoid of human presence. Each photograph amounts to a social portrait, revealing the soul of its various subjects, and layering both past and present in poignant works steeped in sorrow and beauty."

Text taken from MACM

Alejandro Cartagena

Deconstruction # 2

Oswaldo Ruiz

Still Dark

"His images, which consist of original photographs combined with digitally processed, intercut segments can be placed next to and reconfigure some of the most seminal photographic oeuvres of the past century. Some of his work harks back to the early photomontage pioneered by avant-garde artists working in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. While adopting some of these collage techniques, Ruiz transplants this tradition to the specific locale of Latin American visual themes. In his work, the human body emerges as a map to be surveyed and read. A purposeful retort to the work of, among others, Andreas Gursky, Ruiz mobilizes a lexicon of German montage and visual culture without succumbing to the temptation of monumentalism occasionally encountered in Gursky's work."

-Avital Ronell and Ulrich Baer.

Text taken from Oswaldo Ruiz

Thomas Kneubühler

Untitled # 4 (2003-2008)

"Office 2000 provides the stuff of an archeological dig: remnants of the inhabitants are evident through personal effects, humanizing the otherwise generic and mundane office environment."

-Larry Glawson

Text taken from Thomas Kneubuhler

Oscar Oliver

VII
From The Belgo Building Series (2008)

Oscar Oliver

III

From The Belgo Building Series (2008)

Oscar Oliver

II
From The Belgo Building Series (2008)

Oscar Oliver

VII (Detail*)

From The Belgo Building Series (2008)

*256 C-Prints mounted on a black cardboard

Bill Durgin

Swann 3 (2005)

"My photographs reflect a fascination with the body as form. The complex figurations, undulating arrangements of flesh, as the body seems to collapse onto itself, image an almost abstracted figure lacking appendages and hair. The physical structure becomes not just a shell, but a moving sculpture of skin, muscle, fat, and bone. The gesture within each photograph is created through exploring my own physical limitations and collaborative improvisation with dancers and performers. Often I will come up with a pose and demonstrate it and then ask the model to repeat or respond to it. Each pose transmogrifies the figure towards abstraction; exaggerating or diminishing the skeletal structure until it approaches an amorphic form. I want the bodies to be recognized as bodies, but also to be detached from common perceptions of the figure. Bound within each singular view, the uncanny figures convey the body as both abject and marvelous. Composed through a 4x5 view camera, I place the figure within the location and select an angle to shoot from. I remove furnishings to create a perspective which foregrounds the rudiments of the architecture, the light, and the figure itself. Each space is empty, but not anonymous. It is a setting not a set, within which the figure is grounded in a particular environment revealed by the traces of the doorway, ceiling, or floor. Suspended along the edges of the space, along the edges of figuration, these photographs also move along the edges of the photographic genres of narrative, portraiture, and environment."

-Bill Durgin

Text taken from: Saatchi Gallery

Jeff Wall

The Destroyed Room (1978)

"Wall's work is underpinned by the considerable body of his own theoretical writing that advances an argument for the necessity of a pictorial art. Much of the work pictures social tension, cities with changing demographics, intersections, suburbs and dead zones. Other work is much more enigmatic, fantastic and seemingly personal. Wall's photographs are complicated productions involving cast, sets and crews as well as digital and computer postshoot manipulation. They have been characterized as one-frame cinematic productions rather than photographs in the ordinary sense. They address the history of painting more than the history of photography."

Text taken from: The Canadian Encyclopedia

Louis Joncas

Detritus 4 (2003)

"These are not still lives of flowers and fresh fruit; quite the opposite. These are images of the banana peels and apple cores after the fruit has been consumed. In fact, these are images of everything Joncas has consumed over the past few years: food, cigarettes, drugs, medicine - and men. Joncas says this intense scrutiny places him in a decidedly vulnerable position. Everything is on view, from my addictions to my sexuality to my pastimes, what I consume and what I need to consume.Detritus is informed in large part by Joncas' fascination with vanitas, a genre of 16th and 17th century still life painting consisting of objects that symbolize the fugitive nature of human life and pursuit of pleasure. While Detritus is faithful to the idea of vanitas, it is made for a 21st-century reality. The symbolism is more contemporary but the message remains the same: the passage of time, our experiences, our luxuries are all in vain, says Joncas. A bright red food tray serves as a receptacle for used condoms and empty vials of the drug Special K, remnants of a circuit party weekend; a sunshine yellow tray becomes a coroner's table for a mutilated GI Joe doll, a victim of his dog's insatiable chewing. The photographs are grotesque and gorgeous. Greasy black peels and egg shells, plastic food wrap and cigarette butts, half-eaten noodles and a NicoDerm box, a pile of dog hair - all are retrieved from the dustbin and elevated to the gallery wall. In many ways the whole body of work goes against all of the conventions of photography, the whole abject side of it. The hair, the dust balls, they are just so anti-photography, they are the enemy. You are always trying to avoid hair and dust and here I am making them larger than life."

Text taken from: Xtra

Beatrice Helg

Crépuscule IV (2004)

"With simple materials – light, frosted glass, sheets of rusted metal, blocks of concrete and architectural drawings – Béatrice Helg constructs her images for the camera and creates the illusion of monumental spaces. Sculpture or ephemeral architecture, her photographs have a spiritual quality and make a case for calm, harmony and equilibrium."

Text taken from: Promethee

David Williams

Is: Ecstasies I-XXII (1988)

"The points of light and recurring signs and symbols, with their vague reference to archetypes, are the notes of harmony and discord in a musical pattern that resolve unease into calm assurance."

Text taken from: David Williams

Michael Wesely

Potsdamer Platz (1997-1999)

"With up to two-year long exposures Michael Wesely documented the construction being done at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin between 1997 and 1999. The project was commissioned by DaimlerChrysler. The images were taken from five different camera positions and transform the chronological sequences of the construction activity into one simultaneous action, whereby an infinite number of individual moments overlap until they form a complex structure of fragments of reality. Before and after fuse together in that the previously, undeveloped horizon is still visible through the newly constructed buildings. This confuses our visual understanding. The massive constructions seem almost transparent, yet the rays of sun in the sky documenting the various seasonal positions of the sun, gain a surprising level of materiality."

Text taken from: Michael Wesely

Renze Dijkema

Ghyliodes II (2005)

"In my work I handle merely one genre: the still-life that resembles a landscape. Almost daily I gather little objects from my environment, like small parts of packaging materials, tools or toys. In my studio I arrange them by colour and size. This collection is the source of my works. I design landscapes by arranging these small parts on several tables and photograph them from a low angle, using large or small, analogue or digital cameras. After that the photos are printed in large sizes. Some photos have become collages. The prints are cut in pieces and glued together again on board. The used items are not recognizable any more and will be referred to in an associative manner. In the dreamlike surroundings the used objects have lost their original meanings. The context, light, forms and sizes in the landscape evoke feelings of deserted worlds, lost cultures and landscapes filled with ruins. A polishing brush becomes a fragile figure, a printing plate a fabric and the lid of the paint-pot a moon landscape. Some photos show just one single object, like a wad of paper or a bristle. They look like moving creatures, thanks to the extreme contrast between sharp and fuzzy elements."

-Renze Dijkema

Text taken from: Renze Dijkema