Rooted/UpRooted, curated by Roya Khadjavi and Massoud Nader, which is on view from November 12 through 25 at Elga Wimmer PCC Gallery, New York, New York, connects trees, whose roots are secured deep in the earth with those who come from a place, in this case Iran, whose roots also run deep. Whereas tree roots remain in one place, the Iranian artists whose work is displayed here have been uprooted from their land, but maintain their cultural and historical roots, showing their memories and history in their work. In Omid Mohkami’s “Absence Series, a heart-rending photograph of a curved road with an unoccupied chair in its center and a dress stuck on barbed wire makes us wonder where the road leads and carries those who follow it, as they say in Maine, away. In another of Mohkami’s black and white photographs, a circle of chairs, occupied by no one, looking as if the master and his … [Read more...] about ROOTED/UPROOTED: TREES AND ARTISTS AT ELGA WIMMER PCC GALLERY
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LIFE’S DECISIVE MOMENTS: MALEK CELEBRATES PEOPLE AT WORK
Photographer Tad Malek knows a bit about patience. With a background in color landscape photography, Malek has spent full days immersed in natural surroundings, waiting for the perfect still. Malek’s current exhibition, “People at Work and Other Environmental Portraits,” on view at Springfield Museums, marks a departure from the restraint of waiting for that consummate shot into the realm of portraiture in the moment, with all its alluring fallibility and epiphanic fulfillment. Choosing almost exclusively black-and-white images for “People at Work and Other Environmental Portraits,” Malek has deliberately shifted media to capture the rich textures and nuanced variations within each piece. Sharp exposure delineates the finest detail, whether it be the lines along the walkway of the “Brooklyn Bridge Lady in the Shade,” 2008; the sculpted musculature of a male bather in “Rio de Janeiro … [Read more...] about LIFE’S DECISIVE MOMENTS: MALEK CELEBRATES PEOPLE AT WORK
WEIGHT OF THE WALLS: ETHAN MURROW’S “HAULING” AT THE CURRIER
With approximately 900 fine-tipped Sharpie pens, Ethan Murrow blends storytelling with history, community and labor on the white walls of the Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampshire. In his new exhibition, “Hauling,” globular collages of hundreds of tools including a saw, wooden wheel, speedometer, nail, net and modern high-tech machinery, tower over visitors. Alongside them, drawn people hold ropes and play a kind of tug-of-war with the mechanic entities, while some carry the weight of them in their hands or on their shoulders. The diagonal tugging of ropes creates movement across the walls, where visitors stand in the center of a laborious scene. The exhibit draws upon the industrial history of Manchester, which during the mid-19th century, held the largest cotton mill worldwide. Today, old mill buildings house restaurants, shops and art galleries. Murrow combines the tools that … [Read more...] about WEIGHT OF THE WALLS: ETHAN MURROW’S “HAULING” AT THE CURRIER
Elevated at Copley Society of Art: Quietly Powerful
There are moments in contemporary art where one is confronted with the big question: Why do I need to contemplate an exhibition when it looks conventional? Hasn’t this been done before? “Elevated” at Copley Society of Art (CoSo) is one of those scream-less conundrum exhibitions. It is a quiet medium-sized national photography show featuring 30 works by both CoSo members and non-members juried by Robert Klein of Robert Klein Gallery that’s on view through October 3. As expected, in a contemporary exhibition, the works on view are in black and white and color formats and range in subject from landscape to figurative, and the display set-up is commercial in that the work is framed and easy to sell. The photographers showcased are Doug Adams, Frank Bartucca, David Lee Black, Sally Bousquet, Dan Cook, John Dalterio, Jim Ferguson, Tim Hale, Robert Hein, Andrea Kemler, Keri McAndrews, … [Read more...] about Elevated at Copley Society of Art: Quietly Powerful