Terri Weifenbach, Gregory Crewsdon, Charles Lee
TERRI WEIFENBACH Air and Dreams #15 Archival pigment print 127 x 91.4 cm Edition of 10 + 2 AP
Galerie Miranda | Terri Weifenbach: Air and Dreams, November 7, 2023 – December 23, 2023
“For its fall 2023 program, Galerie Miranda is delighted to announce the second European solo exhibition by artist Terri Weifenbach (b. 1957, USA), entitled Air and Dreams.
“For over thirty years, Terri Weifenbach has built a dense photographic opus that studies different aspects of the natural world - gardens, insects, flowers, clouds, water, birds, forests - and their unobtrusive, daily interactions with humans. Rather than seek overt signs of a dramatically changed landscape, Weifenbach has always been drawn to quieter subjects and, through her more than 20 publications and 50 exhibitions organized in the US, Japan and Europe, Weifenbach has developed a precise and lyrical signature, often recognizable by her mastery of the bokeh or sfumato play of blur and sharp within an image.
“Originally trained in painting, Weifenbach first turned to color photography in 1992 after discovering the Ektar 25 camera film whose exceptional technical capacity responded to Weifenbach’s painterly sensibilities. In particular, the film allowed the artist to merge near and far on a single plane and to create rich fields of color with the chromatic and emotional impact of painting. Since then, her images have often been composed with a differential focus that blurs our reading of form and space: "By reversing traditional figure-ground relationships and introducing spatial complexity into her photographs, Weifenbach distorts cues that normally help us organize our experience of the visual field: distinctions between near and far, surface and depth, subject and background, macro and micro" (Sarah Kennel) - are we looking at droplets of water and rays of light, or clouds, or perhaps a photographic trick, an error?
“In recent years, new formal elements have appeared in Weifenbach's work: appearing alongside her signature 'bokeh' works are new, sharply-focused images - of scientific tools and urban vistas but also of monumental, age-old trees - that seem to signify a coming into focus of reality, like a sharpening of the senses with encroaching danger. An awakening, perhaps, and the end of dreams? For the exhibition title is borrowed from Gaston Bachelard's 1943 publication L'Air et les Songes: Essai sur l'imagination du mouvement (Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement), a philosophical exploration of the notion of ascension, of lightness, of flight and of liberty. The tenth chapter of Air and Dreams, entitled The Aerial Tree, proposes that the dream is life and that the plant world is responsive, dynamic. Bachelard writes, “...the dream is not an instrument. It is not a means; it lives directly in the realm of ends.” Is this not also the realm of the artist?
“Without a specific geographical identity, Terri Weifenbach's photographs presented at Galerie Miranda recount a collective space, of land and sky, sun and clouds, but also cities and town gardens. Her underlying philosophy is inspired by the great English historian Simon Schama, whose landmark book Landscape and Memory (1995) explored the myths, memories, and obsessions that underlie the Western world's interaction with nature. Like Schama, Terri Weifenbach is not an activist but a messenger, informing us and sharing her reverence for the natural world; reminding us of the great beauty that is in danger and that we must strive to preserve.”
For more information visit Galerie Miranda
Gregory Crewdson, The Corner Market, 2021-2022 Digital pigment print mounted on Dibond
Galerie Templon | Gregory Crewdson: Eveningside, November 8, 2023 – December 23, 2023
“American artist Gregory Crewdson is unveiling his latest work in Paris this autumn with Eveningside, a series of black-and-white pieces created between 2021 and 2022. This final instalment in a trilogy he has been working on since 2012 features twenty panoramic photographs characterised by their disturbing clarity and twilight mood.
“A pioneer of large-scale photography, Gregory Crewdson has been developing a unique photographic language over the last thirty years. Each shot is the result of a lengthy pre-production process involving storyboards, actors, set building, technicians, special effects and sophisticated lighting.
“The Eveningside exhibition was held this summer as part of a retrospective at the Arles Rencontres de la Photographie event. Gregory Crewdson uses it to push the boundary between reality and fiction even further. He invents ambiguous suburban landscapes where the motionlessness of the characters, frozen in the most ordinary of daily activities, is both fascinating and disquieting. A fictional portrait of an America in an unidentifiable era, the scenes depict solitary figures, often captured through a complex interplay of mirrors, storefronts or places of transition: bridges, porches, mini-markets and hardware stores. His black-and-white palette draws skillfully on a series of special effects – fog, smoke and rain – to create atmospheres as melancholy as they are gothic, bringing to mind classical cinema, film noir and the realism of Edward Hopper’s paintings.
“Gregory Crewdson's work oscillates between the vulnerability of the human condition and the paradoxes of the American dream. The complexity of the monochrome tones and their strange beauty offer a powerful metaphor for the unendurable limits of our hyper-connected world, digital and blinded. Crewdson is never didactic, leaving the viewer free to imagine the stories hidden beneath the surface and dream of other possibilities.”
On Friday, November 10, Gregory Crewdson will take part in a discussion at the Maison Européenne de le Photographie at 6PM.
On Saturday, November 11, the artist will do a book signing at Aperture’s stand at Paris Photo.
For more information visit TEMPLON
Charles Lee, Tattoos and Horsetrailers, 2023, 44 x 56 inches, Unique Silver Gelatin Print. Image courtesy of the artist.
SF Camera Work | Charles Lee: sweat + dirt, November 7, 2023 – February 3, 2024
“SF Camerawork is pleased to announce the presentation of Bay Area artist Charles Lee’s first solo exhibition, sweat + dirt, on view at our Fort Mason location from November 7, 2023, through February 3, 2024. A public opening reception will be held on Friday, November 10, from 6-8pm, with additional programs to be announced during the run of the exhibition, via our email list and at sfcamerawork.org.
“sweat + dirt is a document and investigation of contemporary Black rodeo culture and cowfolk in the United States. The show consists of traditional black-and-white photographs, larger-than-life mural prints, and two photo-based installations, one of which further explores the forms and ideas presented in Lee’s installation Been Here at the City of Berkeley’s Cube Space earlier this year.
“The works and images in sweat + dirt were made in Louisiana, California’s Southern and Central Valley, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Through Lee’s project, we are presented with contemporary evidence by which we can trace the multi-racial history and widespread geographic reach of country life, and the role of Black people in the development of U.S. western culture. Lee’s images of Black ranchers, trail riders, ropers, equestrians, and animal trainers, in moments of joy and hard at work, help disrupt both the image of the rugged, white male cowboy as an icon of westward expansion and manifest destiny, and today’s reductive stereotypes of white rurality and black urbanness. According to Lee, “All of this is with the intention to further the discussion about what it truly means to be ‘American.’ In eect, this work shows that we’ve been here.... We are American.””
For more information visit SF Camera Work
