17 April - 1 June 2009
Solar Photography Selections [Fiat Lux]
Richard Garet, Santiago Garza, Lucia Pizzani, Miquel Salom, Alicia Weiser, Walter Sanchez, Lihie Talmor
Private opening gathering Saturday 25 April from 5 to 7 p.m.
for images of the exhibition click here
read the review by Marion Wolberg Weiss in Dan’s Papers
This exhibition consists of photographic works by seven artists that have shown at Solar since its inception in 2001, or who I have otherwise had the pleasure to work with in past. Fiat lux became an appropriate byname for the show not only because it is a phrase commonly used in the realm of photography, but also because a majority of the pieces included deal directly with the subject of light (internal/external, physical/spiritual) or, in many instances, the subject is light.
Most of the photographs have been culled from inventory excepting the enigmatic Time Frame photographs by Richard Garet, described by Andy Graydon as “combining Dan Flavin-inspired light art with the tradition of geometric abstraction in painting….” Garet’s use of digital tools and formats, as in his live video performance presented last month in New York City, inevitably force one to redefine traditional conceptions of photography.
Also selected from outside the inventory is the Citiscape series by Santiago Garza, who is recognized more for the sensitive and sensual portrayals of the human figure that have been exhibited at Solar. These small scale nocturnal shots taken from airplane windows nonetheless parallel the intimacy and drama of his other work.
Lucia Pizzani currently has been exploring the self-portrait and body, but her earlier work dealt primarily with organic subjects and natural panoramas, not exclusively for their aesthetic value but primarily as they represented environmental issues that she supports, in particular those relating to coastlines and the Amazon, the latter reflected quite literally in the two-part Mosaico Piaroa.
Miquel Salom, whose most recent photographic work was exhibited in New York City earlier this year, is included here with a selection from that same lyrical series of photographs titled Esperant. Salom, like Garet, stretches the boundaries of photography, only by more traditional means. He has turned from photographing the material to the immaterial and the viewer is left to ponder and marvel at how he achieves such a breadth of colour, abstraction, and even texture.
In 2007 I invited Walter Sanchez to form part of an exhibition titled Boats & Bridges and the images he produced for that show are haunting: rusted ship hulls emerging from turquoise waters, the industrial detritus they represented turned to visual poetry when fragmented and abstracted through the artist’s lens.
Lihie Talmor became known to me in the late 90s when she was working in three dimensions and exploring the printing technique of photogravure. This year she produced a striking suite of prints based on digitally manipulated photographic images and using Solarplate, an alternative etching technique pioneered by local artist and master printmaker, Dan Welden. A part of this new series will be exhibited here for the first time.
Finally, I am very pleased to introduce the recent production of Alicia Weiser who I had the good fortune to study and work with over a decade ago, and whose explorations into traces of forms -the evidence or witness to physical presence as well as internal existence-from that time have carried into the photography on exhibit now.