JTF (just the facts): A total of 32 black and white works (including single images, diptychs, and groups), framed in white and matted, and hung in the front and back galleries. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, taken between 2005 and 2011. (Installation shots at right.)The works in the show come from the following projects/series. For each, the number of images on view is followed by the print details:
- Neighbors: 3 gelatin silver diptychs, each print 11x14 mounted on archival rag board, in editions of 5+2AP, from 2008-2011
- Desert Houses: 14 gelatin silver prints, either 15x19 or 8x10, each print mounted on archival rag board, both sizes in editions of 10+2AP, from 2005-2011
- Dusk: 10 gelatin silver prints, each print 11x14 mounted on archival rag board, in editions of 5+2AP, from 2006-2011
- Built/Not Built: The Smithson Panorama: 2 sets of 8 gelatin silver prints, each print 8x10, mounted together as a single work on archival rag board, in an edition of 5+2AP, from 2010
- Records: 12 gelatin silver prints, each print 8x10 mounted on archival rag board, hung together as a single work, in an edition of 3+2AP, from 2009-2011
- 1212 Palms: 9 gelatin silver prints, each print 11x14 mounted on archival rag board, hung together as a single work, in an edition of 5+2AP, from 2006-2007
- Bomb Craters: 9 gelatin silver prints, each print 10x13 mounted on archival rag board, hung together as a single work, in an edition of 5+2AP, from 2008
- Splitting: 1 gelatin silver diptych, each print 11x14 mounted on archival rag board, in editions of 5+2AP, from 2009
Comments/Context: Mark Ruwedel's photographs provide an answer to one of the most complicated questions facing contemporary American land (not necessarily landscape) photography: how do we thoughtfully engage photographic history? His last major project, Westward the Course of Empire, documented the path of the railway system, in conceptual dialogue with 19th century greats like Watkins, O'Sullivan, and others. His newest pictures take on the sprawling beast of the New Topographics. The problem of how to move forward visually and conceptually given the lasting influence of this stylistic juggernaut isn't by any means a simple one. Walking too close to the past generates work that is either plainly derivative ("stuck in the 70s") or calmly reverential. What I like best about Ruwedel's new pictures is that they aren't afraid of this history. Instead, each project or series is like a crisp, cerebral, insider conversation, referencing bodies of work that have come before (including various strains of conceptual art as well as Land/Earth Art) but asking new questions and providing contemporary answers..
A walk through the broader and taller galleries at Yossi Milo's new space is like a series of call and response discussions. Free standing houses alone in the desert (both in daylight and at dusk, taken with deadpan quiet formality) connect to any number of predecessors: John Divola, Robert Adams, and once again the Bechers. Other projects are more one-to-one: palm trees with Ed Rusha, split houses with Gordon Matta-Clark, warped vinyl LPs in the desert dirt with Lewis Baltz, and elegant salt encrusted bomb craters with scientific photography from the Manhattan Project. His investigation of Robert Smithson inverts The Spiral Jetty into a 360 degree panoramic view outward, and considers another location where a Smithson work was never built. Each series reprises characteristic motifs and styles, but unpacks them and pares them down further. The underlying ideas about land use, the built environment, reuse and waste, visual patterning and repetition, are all a continuation of the original concepts, but an extension and refinement rather than a hackneyed copy.
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In a world where the typology format has spread like a disease, I came away impressed that these pictures didn't seem tired. Most of the subjects here are decayed, abandoned, falling down, or hollowed out, but there is an elemental beauty to the shapes and geometries, the mirror images and echoes; roof lines, wood framing, blackened windows and flat expanses of scrubby desert provide plenty of raw material for theme and variation exercises and tonal gradation. But my main takeaway was that Ruwedel has absorbed the lessons of the relevant photographic past, but not let them prevent him from carefully and critically thinking about those ideas further. Mindful of the many traps, he seems to have avoided them, and in the process, expanded the conversation. .
Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced based as follows, based on the project/series. - Neighbors: $7500 each
- Desert Houses: $4500 or $2500, based on size
- Dusk: $6500 or $4500
- Built/Not Built: The Smithson Panorama: $20000
- Records: $25000
- 1212 Palms: $22000
- Bomb Craters: $18000
- Splitting: $9000
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)Transit Hub:
Through April 7th
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245 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
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