Zwelethu Mthethwa, New Works @Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 18 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the entry, the divided main gallery space, and the two smaller side rooms. All of the works are digital c-prints, made in 2010 or 2012. There are three projects represented in the show: The Brave Ones, Hope Chest, and The End of An Era, and each of the images in each series comes in a large and small size, as follows - The Brave Ones (54x72 in an edition of 1+1AP and 27x36 in an edition of 3+1AP), Hope Chest (60x80 in an edition of 1+1AP and 24x33 in an edition of 3+1AP) and The End of an Era (49x67 in an edition of 1+1AP and 24x33 in an edition of 3+1AP). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Zwelethu Mthethwa's newest show of portraits certainly ranks among the best work he has produced in his already successful career. In three separate projects, the South African photographer probes the subtleties and depths of personal identity, via the unlikely costumes of members of the Nazareth Baptist Church, the battered hope chests of elderly women, and the hostel room furnishings of anonymous migrant workers. The pictures tell rich stories of the past, the present, and an aspirational future, consistently bursting with thick, astonishing color.

Making the choice to reject your traditional Zulu heritage and join an insurgent Christian church is likely a hard one for any young man. But to do so and then proudly wear the hybrid British/Scottish garb of kilts and bow ties, knee socks and puffy yarn head pieces is enough to test anyone's resolve, especially in a culture with such strong definitions of masculinity. No wonder Mthethwa called these sitters The Brave Ones. Posing in the verdant green of the bush under solitary shade trees, young men stand with languorous defiance, in pith helmets and green ribbons or sporting red checked skirts and starched white shirts. It's a smart inversion of the stereotypical tribal pose, capturing an unexpected willingness (or need) to break from the crowd.

Mthethwa's portraits of women with their hope chests are even more confident and powerful. Weathered women who have seen it all pose with their chests, often resting on them or guarding them with reverent attention. The wooden boxes are heavy and solid, filled with treasures and possessions reaching back to the hopeful time before the woman was married. Many miles have clearly passed since then for all of the subjects, but even though times have changed, the chests have lost none of their traditional importance. One woman in a shiny orange and black dress sits atop her chest flanked by her matching tractor, while another wearing a bright red hat with silver rivets waits primly alongside hers under a blue umbrella. The dusty red earth tries to swallow up one woman's padlocked chest, and a jumbled pile of luggage and blankets threatens that of another. Interior wall colors throb with bold intensity, the sparse painted rooms often organized with the chests as their centerpiece furnishing. The simple image of a woman in a pink headscarf sitting in a green plastic chair before her chest, drenched in a flood of peach light, is at once penetratingly poignant and quietly breathtaking.

Mthethwa's third project, The End of an Era, reprises his earlier images of empty interiors, allowing the details of a tidy room to tell its inhabitant's story. Here one room is covered edge to edge in World Cup team shots and soccer cutouts from newspapers, while another is a study in the contrasting patterns of a blanket, a wooden divider, and a painted wall. Others focus down on specific objects: the orderliness of a set of combs and toiletries (the soap delicately paced and a shard of mirror carefully centered on the table) or the solitary candle on a makeshift bedside table. The pictures are clear evidence that even in the humblest of conditions, people find ways to make a place personal, leaving behind traces of themselves.

More generally, I think this show cements Mthethwa's position as one of the important innovators in contemporary photographic portraiture. He has a brilliant sense for how clothing, objects and environments are representative of a sitter's most strongly held beliefs, and how the subtle interaction between them can reveal something that would otherwise be hidden.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced based on size and series. Prints from The Brave Ones are either $26000 or $18000, those from Hope Chest are either $28000 or $18000, and the ones from The End of an Era are either $26000 or $18000. Mthethwa's work has become more available in the secondary markets in recent years, with prices ranging from roughly $5000 to $28000.

 

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist Facebook page (here)
• Features/Reviews: NY Times T magazine blog (here), Cool Hunting (here)

Zwelethu Mthethwa, New Works

Through February 23rd

Jack Shainman Gallery

513 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

Hank Willis Thomas: Strange Fruit @Aldrich

JTF (just the facts): A total of 4 color photographs and 1 video, alternately framed in black and white and unmatted, and hung in small single room space in the ground floor of the museum. The photographs are all digital c-prints, ranging in size from 60x29 (in editions of 5+1AP) to 35x96 and 65x96 (in editions of 3+1AP). The video runs for 5 minutes, and is available in an edition of 3+1AP. All of the works were made in 2011. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Hank Willis Thomas' newest works pack a wallop in terms of emotional intensity. Mixing the visual language and loaded symbols of slavery with those of modern day professional sports, his stylized images of football and basketball force a dialogue about what kind of options are really available for many contemporary African-American males. They draw uncomfortable, stark parallels, and imply an overlooked, discouraging interchangeability between history and the present.

In both the video and in two of the single photographs, Thomas replaces a traditional basketball hoop with the hanging rope of a noose. Classically beautiful and muscular bodies jostle in one on one and two on two matchups, with layups, jump shots and thundering dunks aimed at the circular rope. A haunting crescendo of musical chants, hums and work songs simmers in the background. Many plays end with one player soaring and dunking through the noose, only to be left hanging alone against the empty blackness, dangling from the rope instead of the rim. The triumphant sporting spectacle has been turned into a lynching (thus the reference to the Billie Holiday song in the exhibition title), where elegant, powerful athleticism has been overcome by prejudice and horror, turning the the whole event into an ugly form of entertainment.

Thomas uses the trappings of football with equal ironic harshness. A man picking cotton squares off with a lineman in football pads, one crouching in the dirt to gather the crop, the other crouching in the perfect green grass ready to play. In another image, a player flies through the air diving for the goal line like a wide receiver, only to be held up short by a rusty chain around his ankle that shackles him to the first down marker. The implication is clear: are these highly paid professional athletes much different than the field workers of old? Aren't they equally slaves to larger cultural forces? How much has really changed?

The pared down simplicity that Thomas employs in these set pieces turns them into vivid allegories. I like the strong masculinity of the images, and the clear replacement of one form of indentured service for another; his contrasts and comparisons are up front and easily legible, making them much harder to ignore. While this is a small show, it is filled with unforgettable images, ones that ask hard questions and force unflinching examination. This isn't opaque, incomprehensible art about art - it's in your face art that smartly uses the lens of our history, challenging the viewer to see the realities of our contemporary world in the sometimes grim and dissonant context of what has come before.

Collector's POV: Since this is a museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices. Thomas' work is not yet consistently available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail likely remains the best option for interested collectors. Thomas is represented in New York by Jack Shainman Gallery (here).

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Exhibit: Corcoran, 2011 (here)
• Interview: Art Nouveau (here)

Hank Willis Thomas: Strange Fruit
Through September 30th

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street
Ridgefield, CT 06877

Adi Nes, The Village @Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color photographs, framed in brown and unmatted, and hung in the entry area and the large back divided gallery. All of the works are chromogenic prints, made between 2008 and 2012. Each image is generally available in a small and large size; the small size is generally 39x49 (or reverse), in editions of 10, while the large size ranges from 55x70 to 69x88 (or reverse), in editions of 5. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Israeli photographer Adi Nes' newest images
are filled with a heightened sense of symbolic and allegorical tension. Taking a busy mix of allusions to Greek tragedy, stories from the Bible, and references to art history, and then filtering them through a contemporary kibbutz setting, he has created large scale staged photographic tableaux that teeter on the edge of formal melodrama.

Nearly all of Nes' photographs are built on anxious contrasts and simmering conflicts: closed versus open spaces, inside versus outside, old versus young. Villagers fire guns from the verdant green of the pasture into the nearby woods, keeping invisible invaders away. Young men argue with an old farmer (sons and a father?) over the fate of a sharply horned goat. A teenage boy is surrounded by naked young women in a dark, underground grotto dripping with cool water. And chickens and bats with outstretched wings hang at the mercy of boys itching for confrontation. Each scene is like a pregnant pause before the action begins. Even the images that mimic recognizable works from art history have this sense of impending struggle; there is something more stoically defiant about the shovel holding Grant Wood lookalike and and more lonely about the Picasso Boy Leading a Horse doppelganger than the originals they echo. And Nes' Greek tragedy references make the entire setting seem even more ominous; the serious choir singers belting out the words of the Greek chorus and the blind man telling his oracular news to the assembled crowd of men both reinforce a mood of enduring weariness.

All of these works feel carefully stage managed, the characters placed just so to maximize the thematic effect. It's photography as dramatic theater, executed with formulaic precision and charged with strong emotions. But in wandering through these galleries, I had the distinct sense of viewing "Israeli Art" and wondering whether I was missing certain references and metaphors that would be obvious, or at least more powerful, to insiders. Perhaps Nes is like an age old storyteller or traveling raconteur, weaving snippets of other epic tales and familiar myths into the fabric of his contemporary parables, hoping to expose his audience to the universal nature of events that have occurred far away.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The smaller 39x49 prints range in price from $20000 to $42000. The larger 55x70 prints range between $28000 and $50000, while the 69x88 prints range between $40000 and $70000. Nes' work has only been sporadically available in the secondary markets for photography in the past decade, with prices generally ranging between $6000 and $35000. But his works must have been more available in the contemporary art markets during that time, as I have seen sale results as high as $264000 mentioned in various articles. Companion shows to this one are running concurrently at Sommer Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv (here) and Galerie Praz-Delavallade in Paris (here).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Reviews/Features: Jerusalem Post (here), Haaretz (here)
• Interview: Huffington Post (here)

Adi Nes, The Village
Through July 28th

Jack Shainman Gallery
513 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

Richard Mosse, Infra @Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 26 large scale color photographs, framed in grey and unmatted, and hung in the entry area, the large back divided gallery, and two smaller side rooms. All of the works are digital c-prints, made in 2010 or 2011. Each image is generally available in a small and large size; smaller sizes include 20x24, 28x35, and 40x50 (or reverse), all in editions of 5+1, and larger sizes include 48x60, 72x90, and 72x106 (or reverse), in editions of 2+1. A monograph of this body of work is being published by Aperture (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Richard Mosse's new images of the conflict in the eastern Congo push the definitional edges of photojournalism in both clever and confrontational ways. His photographs simultaneously operate on intertwined levels of documentary truth and artistic interpretation, mixing a reporter's eye for the facts of the story and an artist's eye for the mood.

Stripped of their color, Mosse's pictures would seem similar to images of war and rebellion that we see everyday: charismatic rebel leaders in fatigues surrounded by rag tag bunches of soldiers, the fight slipping in and out of the jungle, ravaging the countryside and then disappearing like a wisp of smoke. But the challenge is to get beyond these semi-posed units, the makeshift camps, and the military marches through the undergrowth to capture the disorienting, emotional landscape of the shifting alliances, the wins and losses, the destructive impact on the local people and the land itself, and the general inexplicable gruesomeness of it all. Like Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, Mosse's body of work takes the real and makes it exaggerated and surreal.

What is so obviously different and shockingly new here is Mosse' palette. Using discontinued Kodak Aerochrome infrared film, he has transformed dense pockets of jungle greenery and wide pastoral hillsides into a topsy-turvy Dr. Seuss world, where pink and red have become the dominant colors. River valleys, steep rock slides and undulating pastures are seemingly covered with bushes of cotton candy and hills of bubblegum. Soldiers wear pink berets and stand in towering undergrowth reminiscent of bright red Christmas pointsettas. The photographs are both joltingly wrong and quite beautiful, forcing the viewer to look again and again, trying to make sense of what is being presented. And this, of course, is the point; it's impossible to go down the rabbit hole of the Congo and have the situation seem normal or comprehensible. Even simple grazing cows look alien and out of place.
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While I admire the eye-popping, memorable distinctiveness of these images, I think Mosse's expansion of his photojournalistic boundaries is even more important. He has used unexpected color reversal as a metaphorical device, a method for providing a sense of the place that goes beyond the visual details caught on film. While his war-time compositions may look familiar, the entire aesthetic experience is unsettling and perplexing, undermining our ability to derive answers or draw conclusions. The wild palette tells us that we have entered an alternate reality of some kind, and that things are not what they seem. In the end, this inversion seems both highly appropriate and durably original, and I am confident that these images will continue to stand out for many years to come, instantly recognizable as the uncertainty of rebel warfare, stunningly turned on its head.
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Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced based on size. Here's the breakdown: 20x24 - $5500, 28x35 - $6500, 40x50 - $9500, 48x60 - $16000, 72x90 - $20000, 72x106 - $25000. Mosse's work is not readily available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is really the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Interview: Conscientious (here)
• Feature: Flavorwire (here)

Richard Mosse, Infra
Through December 23rd

Jack Shainman Gallery

513 West 20th Street

New York, NY 10011

Malick Sidibé @Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 52 black and white photographic works, variously framed and matted, and hung in the entry gallery and the main divided space in the back. 26 of the images are vintage gelatin silver prints framed in white blonde wood and matted; these works range in size from roughly 3x5 to 5x7, and were made between 1961 and 1986. 14 of the images are more recent gelatin silver prints of some of Sidibé's better known pictures, framed in black and matted; these prints range in size from 8x8 to 38x38 and were printed within the last 10 years. 11 of the works and 1 installation of 27 images tightly grouped together on one wall are surrounded by Sidibé's signature hand painted color frames made of glass and cardboard; these range in size from 9x6 to 20x16 and were made between 1965 and 2005. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This well-edited, approachable show of the work of Malian photographer Malick Sidibé has something for everyone, from those who have never been exposed to his exuberant portraits to those who are already dedicated followers and collectors. It successfully mixes vintage rarities and creased studio treasures with large scale modern prints of iconic images like Nuit de Noel and Regardez Moi, providing a cross section of his artistic output across several decades.

I don't think I will ever tire of Sidibé's funky studio portraits and energetic shots of dance parties in Bamako from the 1960s and 1970s; there is something thoroughly contagious about their optimism. A young woman shows of her new handbag while wearing a dress with huge white polka dots, a young man struts in an improvised sailor suit wearing big sunglasses, while another man is dressed head to toe in all white, including gloves and mirrored shades. Guys pose proudly near a white car, others show off records, and couples dance with tenderness and joy. Even when the young men and women square off, threatening to throw rocks at each other, there is a sense of unspoiled playfulness at work.

The show balances this liveliness with more formal studio portraits and head shots, many in traditional dress or highlighting a special hairstyle. Multi-generational families stand together solemnly in riots of patterned clothing, and a whole wall is covered by baby pictures, each with a special hand painted frame. I was particularly drawn to Sidibé's recent portraits of sitters with their backs to the camera. They are elegant and almost abstract, especially when the clothing and studio settings clash and echo each other; they trade a quiet simplicity for the fun-filled strutting and innocent performing of his other works.

While this show may not teach us much about Sidibé's work that wasn't already well known, its freshness and life, its style and swagger, are a welcome reminder that portraiture (even in its most traditional forms)need not be dour or self-consciously serious to be powerfully memorable.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The smaller vintage gelatin silver prints are either $3800 or $4800 each. The larger recent prints range from $5500 for the 8x8 size to $15000 for the 38x38 size. The single images in hand painted frames range from $4800 to $20000 each, and the group installation is $30000.

In general, most of the Sidibé prints to be found in the secondary market are later prints. More and more of these prints have sold at auction in recent years, with prices ranging from $2500 to $12500.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Interviews: lens culture (here), Index magazine (here)

Malick Sidibé
Through August 5th
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Jack Shainman Gallery
513 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, The Architect's Brother @Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 22 works, including 19 black and white photographs, 1 black and white photogravure, and 2 sculptures, generally unframed, and displayed in the entry gallery, the two side rooms, and the main divided space in the back. 17 of the photographs are black and white RC prints mounted to Russian ply panels, with Golden acrylics and Golden UV varnish. These works were made between 1998 and 2001, and come in editions of 4+2AP; physical dimensions range between 34x45 to 41x62. The other 2 photographs are fiber based prints on cotton rag and aluminum honeycomb with encaustic. These works were made in 1997 and come in editions of 4+1AP; physical dimensions for both are roughly 26x22. The single photogravure in the show was made in 2000, in an edition of 40+5AP, with dimensions of 20x18. The two sculptures were made in 2011. A monograph of this body of work is available from Twin Palms (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The images from Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison's series The Architect's Brother were made more than a decade ago, and I'm guessing that most collectors will recognize them at least tangentially, as they have been displayed in plenty of venues in the years since and because they have such a distinctive style. While I may have flipped through the monograph at a bookstore or seen an image or two reproduced somewhere before, this was the first time I had actually seen the photographs in person shown together as an entire body of work.

If you had asked me before my visit what I could tell you about this work, I likely would have loosely categorized it as surreal and theatrical, perhaps a bit heavy handed and gimmicky in its sepia toned retro staginess. But as I stood in the gallery, I found many of the images more compelling than I had previously given them credit for. There is an undeniable creativity and originality on display here, a kind of dystopian fairy tale aesthetic that alternates between the metaphorical and the fanciful. In every scene, a solitary man struggles against the destruction of the natural world, surrounded by dark smoky skies and scarred, featureless horizons. He tries to clean the clouds, listens to the wind, delusionally repairs tree stumps, and builds a contraption to make rain. There is something inordinately sad about the increasingly odd efforts of this lone man fighting a losing battle fix nature. His endeavors to make sense of it all, using backward hand built props, are both surprisingly poignant and cautionary.

What I think is most interesting about these pictures is that the ParkeHarrisons have taken on the timely issue of the human impact on our environment, but have avoided the more mainstream approach of making large color pictures of polluted rivers, immense mountain top removal mines, smog choked cities, and deforested wilderness. Instead, they have made more intimate performance pieces that focus on the connectedness of man and nature, fairy tales that imagine a science fiction world where we symbolically labor to recover what we have lost.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The RC prints are either $28000 or $32000, the fiber based prints are $18000, and the photogravure is $15000. The two sculptures are $35000 and $26000 respectively. Work by the ParkeHarrisons is intermittently available at auction, with prices ranging between $3000 and $20000 in recent years.

My favorite image in the exhibit was Tree Stories, 2000; it's the image on the right in the bottom installation shot. I liked the combination of absurd futility and hopefulness embodied by the man listening to the tangle of wires leading to endless piles of sawed off tree trunks.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, The Architect's Brother

Through March 12th

Jack Shainman Gallery
513 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

Deborah Luster, Tooth For An Eye @Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 35 individual black and white works, along with 1 diptych, 1 pair of videos, and 1 table and cabinet installation, displayed in the entry gallery and the main divided space in the back. All of the photographs are toned gelatin silver prints mounted on Dibond, made between 2008 and 2010. 30 of the images are sized 24x30, and come in editions of 3+1. 5 of the images are printed larger, either 49x61 (in editions of 2+1) or 55x55 (in editions of 1+1); the diptych is a pair of 49x61 prints (in an edition of 2+1). A pair of videos run on iPads with cast aluminum frames, in an edition of 5+1. The table and cabinet installation includes 6 bound ledgers, with three of the ledgers open and on display; these books include smaller prints from the same series. A monograph of this body of work is forthcoming from Twin Palms (here). (Installation shots at right.).

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Comments/Context: I first encountered the work of Deborah Luster a few years ago in connection with her massive portraiture project documenting inmates in Louisiana's prisons. Part of what resonated most strongly with those images was the sense that photographs could be used to ward off forgetting, to ensure that individuals who were invisible were somehow remembered. This same sense of elusive and disappearing history is at the heart of Luster's newest pictures, which capture locations in New Orleans where violent homicides have taken place.

Luster's round black and white images create the impression of looking through a keyhole, where a small degree of curvature and distortion surrounds the central location. The pictures are a taxonomy of overlooked non-places: grimy sidewalks, overgrown alleys, empty street corners, abandoned buildings, quiet train tracks and graffiti covered passageways. Both lacking in people and any visible evidence which could be used to pinpoint the spot of the crimes (chalk circles, blood stains or the like), it is impossible to actually see what happened in these specific locations; the violence has long disappeared from view (whether recent or decades past), and yet it lingers over the grey scenes like a heavy cloud. Notes chronicle the spectrum of horrors, often with multiple incidents occurring at the same site: drive by shooting, stabbing, found in a ditch, shot in the head, beaten with baseball bat, wrapped in a carpet and shot, run over.

Luster's investigation of the nature of memory as applied to a place recalls work as diverse as Angela Strassheim's black light crime scene interiors, Mark Klett's rephotography and Sally Mann's corpses, where places and objects provide clues to a forgotten history, where time has eroded part of the narrative but left remnants behind for viewers to use to imagine both the past and future. Luster's images in particular ask questions about the downstream reverberations of violence, and about how the cycle of homicides and victims can be broken. In her works, a forgettable garbage area or a motel balcony has been infused with the concealed imprint of a remembered incident; how or whether these places can escape their history and begin again is unknown.

I think this work displays an unusual inversion of strength, where the backstory and conceptual framework is much stronger than the individual images themselves would be on their own; often the deserted sidewalk or vacant lot is just that, framed in a formal, documentary manner, and made whole by the knowledge of the murder that is conspicuously absent. As such, I think these photographs will work best in book form, where the relentless piling on of location after location that will come with the flipping of the pages will help to reinforce the scale and immensity of the invisible history; a single image, separated from this larger narrative will likely be somewhat less powerful, especially to those who blow by the wall text and don't understand what the scene represents. That said, Luster's project is a thorough and mature investigation of a complicated and ultimately unphotographable subject - the effects of painful human memory on a weary and indifferent landscape of concrete and brick.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The smaller 24x30 prints are $5000 each, while the larger prints are either $14000 (46x61) or $16000 (55x55). The photographic diptych is $25000, while the pair of videos is $12000. The table/cabinet installation is $85000. Luster's work has little or no auction history, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

My favorite image in the exhibit was Tooth For An Eye, Ledger 03-04, Location: 1100 Block North Prieur, Date(s): Feb 27, 2007, Name(s) Herbert Preston (19), Notes: Recently returned Katrina evacuee. Gunshots to head and body. 2008-2010. It's the image on the left in the group of three below. I liked the interwoven geometries of the plywood boards, the awnings, and the paint dripped stairs.

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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Review: Times-Picayune (here)
• One Big Self: Prison Photography (here)

Deborah Luster, Tooth For An Eye

Through February 5th

Jack Shainman Gallery

513 West 20th Street

New York, NY 10011

Zwelethu Mthethwa, Inner Views @Studio Museum in Harlem

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 color photographs, hung in the main gallery space on the ground floor and in an adjoining side gallery. All of the works are chromogenic prints, either mounted on plexi and not framed or framed in blond wood; many are printed in large, object quality proportions. The exhibit was organized by Associate Curator Naomi Beckwith. The Studio Museum in Harlem does not allow photography in the galleries, so unfortunately, there are no installation shots for this show; the images that accompany this post were taken from the museum website. The recent Aperture monograph (here) is on sale in the museum shop. (Untitled from Interiors, 1997, at right.)

The exhibit includes work from three different series. These projects are listed below, with the number of photographs on view in parentheses:

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Interiors (11, from 1997-2003)

Empty Beds (3, from 2003)

Common Ground (3, from 2008)

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A supporting exhibit entitled Inside the Collection: Interiors from the Studio Museum shares the smaller side gallery with the Mthethwa show. It includes photographic works by Adia Millet, Carrie Mae Weems, Mickalene Thomas, Frank Stewart, James VanDerZee, and Malick Sidibé.

Comments/Context: South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa has been doing a splendid job of building awareness for his work here in New York in the past 18 months or so. Starting with a solid show of new images at Jack Shainman last spring (review here), he has followed that up with the events and book signings surrounding the release of his terrific Aperture monograph earlier this year (review here), and with a solo museum show at the Studio Museum in Harlem this summer. It has been a well orchestrated effort in building momentum and name recognition. (Untitled from Empty Beds series, 2002, at right.)

The Studio Museum exhibition is in many ways a perfect foil for the Shainman gallery show. It covers three photographic projects that focus on interior scenes, while the more recent work was all taken outside - there is no overlap of images on display, so the combination of the two shows provides a decently comprehensive view of Mthethwa's career (except for the excellent but missing Sugar Cane series). At the simplest level, the pictures in this show can be thought of as a contemporary form of social documentary photography. Following in the footsteps of Riis, Evans, Lange and others, Mthethwa has made images of the domestic lives of migrant workers, capturing the unexpected personalization of their single room spaces. He has also documented the aftermath of natural disaster, homes ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans or the wild fires of Cape Town, making the destruction interchangeable and universal.

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Mthethwa's private spaces are dense with details, low ceilings bearing down on sparse, makeshift furnishings, often cobbled together and scavenged from found materials. In Interiors, the inhabitants pose amidst their surroundings, actively participating in the creation of their portraits, almost as if they were in a formal studio. Simple items (a tricycle, a group of ceramic dogs, a large watch, matching plaid jackets) give us glimpses of individuality and clues to personality, each a tiny narrative of self. In Empty Beds, the rooms are quiet and solemn, the beds neatly made, the washcloths draped over wire hangers, evidence of inhabitants who are trying to make their austere rooms livable. In Common Ground, while the interiors are also empty, they are the opposite of the carefully controlled bedrooms; instead they are filled with wreckage and disorder, lost in mud spackled walls and taped windows.

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What makes these pictures explode off the wall is their dramatic use of vibrant, saturated color. Wallpapers made from newspaper advertising supplements, wine labels, or patterned plastic sheeting are layered in chaotic, overlapping combinations. Each setting has its own color highlights and experiments: bright blue paint, green linoleum, red shoes, yellow walls. The painterly color fills the frame with crackling energy and life, in images that might otherwise be sullen or gloomy. In some works, the thickness of the color nearly drowns out the content, making the images almost abstract; in others, the color merely turns up the volume, transforming a simple scene into something more inspiring. When printed at mural sized scale (as a few of the images are), the interiors shimmer with visual stimulation.

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All in, even if you saw the earlier Shainman gallery show or have pored over the monograph, this exhibit provides an overdue summary of some of Mthethwa's best projects, shown off the way they were meant to be seen: in large, dynamic, up close color.

Collector's POV: Zwelethu Mthethwa is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York (here). His photographs have just begun to enter the secondary markets in the past few years, with a small handful of lots selling between $8000 and $14000. (Untitled from Common Ground series, 2008, at right.)

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), Village Voice (here, scroll down)
• Interview with Larissa Leclair (here)

Zwelethu Mthethwa, Inner Views

Through October 24th

The Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th Street

New York, NY 10027

Book: Zwelethu Mthethwa

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2010 by Aperture (here). 120 pages, with 69 color and 9 black and white images. Includes an interview by Isolde Brielmaier, an essay by Okwui Enwezor, and a short biography. (Cover shot at right, via Amazon.)

This monograph contains images from the following photographic projects/series:

Interiors (1995-2005)
Empty Beds (2002)
Sugar Cane (2003)
Churches (2006)
Gold Miners (2006)
Mozambique/The River (2007)
Quartz Miners (2007-2008)
Brick Workers (2008)
Coal Miners (2008)
Contemporary Gladiators (2008)
Common Ground (2008)

Comments/Context: After seeing South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa's show last year (linked below), as we often do, we went looking for more information to gain a better understanding of his entire body of work. Unfortunately, at the time, there were few good web resources on him, only a handful of broader surveys of African contemporary photography, and no decent monographs that we could easily consult. Happily, this situation has recently been resolved by the release of this fine collection of Mthethwa's work from the past decade.

What I find exciting and original about Mthethwa's approach to capturing the post-apartheid world of South Africa is that unlike David Goldblatt's superlative images that are indelibly rooted in the nuanced history of the land, Mthethwa's pictures contemplate the realities of the immediate present, in a manner that forgoes a heavy-handed anthropological or documentary dissection, and instead employs a more intimate and humanist touch. All of the pictures in this book are portraits (even when they depict empty spaces); they tell stories of specific individual lives, wrapped in immense daily challenges, all in the context of larger forces that are often beyond their control.

I think the two strongest bodies of work in this book are the early Interiors and the workers from Sugar Cane, but all of the images included find that delicate balance of pride and humility in the face of a wide range of difficult circumstances. Whether the people are digging in the red dust of a quartz mine, pounding on the rubble of bricks, posing against a mountainous wall of coal sacks, scavenging on rubbish heaps, or chopping down sugar cane with machetes, when they stop for a moment to face the camera, we see the complex mix of defiance, weariness, and strength of spirit that drives them to get by using whatever means necessary. The Sugar Cane portraits are the most successful of these worker images because they combine the inherent contrast of the verdant green hills, the texture of the rough stalks, and the vastness of the manual labor required to bring in the crop, with the alternating determination and indifference on the faces of the machete wielding subjects. The tension is what makes the pictures resonate.

The interior images of worker settlements, shantytowns, and hostels on the outskirts of the big cities use the creation of personal space as a metaphor for the defense of human dignity. Regardless of the cardboard walls, corrugated tin roofs, or compacted dirt floors, these cramped spaces have been transformed into representations of the personalities of their inhabitants. In some rooms, newspapers and magazines cover ever inch of the wall space, creating chaotic clashing patterns of color. In others, the setting is more spare, with only a few pieces of improvised furniture or personal belongings, set against walls painted a uniform color, the bed neatly made. And yet when photographed within their own environments, the subjects seem to find themselves, and tell their proud stories of life in the present, opening up their vulnerabilities and sacrifices, and looking ahead with remarkable optimism.

Part of the power of these pictures comes from their deft use of color (as is ably pointed out in the excellent essay by Okwui Enwezor). The contrasts of bright color bring life and personality to these images; were they to be executed in black and white, the same scenes would likely seem quite a bit more negative or depressing (especially given the predominance of deadpan expressions). Somehow, the colors seem thicker and more lush than usual: the rich pink of a floral linoleum, the soft light blue of a painted wall, the electric green of a patterned wall paper, the bright red of a dirty work shirt, or the neon orange of a pair of rubber gloves. Taken together, they plant us firmly in the present, settled into the rhythms of modern South African life.

Aperture has got the timing of this book just right - Mthethwa has developed a strong and deep portfolio of work in the past decade, and this monograph has come along at precisely the right moment to expose it (with appropriate scholarship and editing) to a much wider audience.

Collector’s POV: Zwelethu Mthethwa is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York (here); a show of recent work was on view in the spring of 2009 (DLK COLLECTION review here). In general, his work has just begun to enter the secondary markets, with a small handful of lots selling between $8000 and $11000 in the past few years.

Transit Hub:

• Event: Zwelethu Mthethwa and Okwui Enwezor in conversation, March 2, 2010 (here)

Richard Mosse, The Fall @Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 photographs and 1 video, hung in the entry area, large back gallery, and two smaller side rooms. The 10 color images are all digital c-prints face mounted to plexi, framed in thin silver with no mat. The prints come in two general sizes; a large print approximately 72x90 or reverse (with some variation in dimensions from image to image) and a smaller print approximately 40x50 or reverse (again with some small variations); these prints come in editions of 2+1 and 5+1 respectively. The two black and white images are digital silver prints with selenium toning, framed in thicker white frames with no mats. Again, these prints come in large and small sizes, although the specific dimensions are different (one is 50x62 or 29x36, the other 50x85 or 40x50); these are also made in editions of 2+1 and 5+1 based on size. All of the images were taken in 2009. The video is approximately 4 minutes long and is shown in its own darkened room. It has been produced in an edition of 5+1. (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: Richard Mosse's new body of work is aptly called The Fall, as it centers on the quiet aftermath of conflict and the abandoned remnants of battle, specifically in Iraq. In these pictures, memories and symbols mix in unusual ways to commemorate the war-torn past.
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The best of the images in this show depict anonymous bullet ridden and pock marked cars, stripped of their tires and anything else of value, the sheet metal shredded and twisted in sharp angles. Sitting alone in the thick smoky dust, they are slowly being eaten away by the sand, shadowy sculptural monuments to roadside bombs, gun battles, or innocents caught in the crossfire. The video on view in a side gallery continues this theme: large scraps of unidentifiable metal are circled by the camera, with the endless names of the cities and towns of Iraq recited in alphabetical order in a deadpan voice over; strewn in the desert, they become deformed shrines and markers for events now forgotten.
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A second group of pictures depicts grounded fighter planes and passenger jets, shot down, partially destroyed, or just left to rot, their tails and empty cockpits jutting up like obelisks, rusting amid weeds, forests, and blankets of snow.
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And while much has been made of the grandeur of Saddam Hussein's many palaces in Iraq, Mosse's images of Uday's palace show the ironic reality of these over-the-top royal mansions: the turquoise-tiled swimming pool is dry and full of rubble, the ornate columns are smashed and falling down, and soldiers in full battle dress are lounging on the terrace with their machine guns, the vast empty desertscape in the background.

Mosse's images are a reminder that the most poignant relics of war may not be the heroic statues or elegant tombstones; they may be the discarded fragments of the destruction, neglected and left behind, but evidence just the same.
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Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced based on size. Regardless of the printing process or the exact dimensions of the works, the "large" images are $18000 each and the "small" ones are $9500 each; the video is $6000. Mosse's work is not readily available in the secondary markets, so interested collectors will need to follow up at retail.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Interview: BLDGBLOG (here)
• Feature: Lens (here)

Richard Mosse, The Fall
Through December 23rd

Jack Shainman Gallery
513 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

Zwelethu Mthethwa, New Works @Shainman

JTF (just the facts): A total of large scale 18 chromogenic prints, framed in blond wood with no mat, hung in the entry, the main gallery, and two smaller side rooms. The prints come in two sizes, 59x76 (in an edition of 1) and 32x41 (in an edition of 3), and were made between 2006 and 2008. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa's show of new work now on view at Jack Shainman continues an approach seen in his earlier images: powerful documentary portraits made out in the real world of his native country (and neighboring lands), rather than in the sterilized confines of the commercial studio.

There are three sets of work in this show, all with evocative and memorable settings: ragged children with found treasures atop seemingly endless trash heaps (Contemporary Gladiator), young men amidst huge stacks of lumpy white bags of coal at the market (Coal Miner), and workers digging in crumbled and dry red earth (Quartz Miner). All of the subjects stare directly (almost defiantly) into the camera, posing with a sense of pride, regardless of the wretched environments and harsh working conditions that surround them.
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The Coal Miner portraits are the most successful of the three series, as the stacked bags create both unusual visual patterns and small rooms and spaces where the workers are posed. Beneath the baseball caps and grubby t-shirts are men who are trying to make a life out of tasks the world has generally forgotten; there are plenty of parallels with Sebastiao Salgado's humanist pictures of workers, but with a particular African look and feel, full of thick, warm color.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced at $14000 and $22000 depending on the size. A handful of images by the artist have appeared at auction in the past few years, selling between $8000 and $11000. Since we are not portrait collectors, Mthethwa's images aren't a fit for our particular collection, but I certainly came away impressed with the expressive nature of these large well crafted works.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Upcoming Aperture monograph (here)
• Additional monographs from 1999, 2000 (here)

Zwelethu Mthethwa, New Works
Through May 23rd

Jack Shainman Gallery

513 West 20th Street

New York, NY 10011

Book: Malick Sidibé, Photographs

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2003 by Steidl and the Hasselblad Center, in conjunction with the artist's receipt of the 2003 Hasselblad Award. 108 pages, including 65 black and white plates. Essays by Gunilla Knape and Manthia Diawara, with a conversation with Sidibé recorded by Andre Magnin. (Cover shot at right.)

Comments/Context: Malian photographer Malick Sidibé has been on our list of artists to get better acquainted with for quite a while now. We have seen a few of his captivating portraits in group shows or at auction previews over the years, but until now, we hadn't spent the time to look carefully at the entire body of his work. This monograph is an excellent first resource primer on Sidibé for those who want to educate themselves about this important African photographer.

Sidibé's best pictures come from the 1960s and 1970s, when he made staged studio portraits and looser documentary shots of the youth culture of Bamako. In these post-colonial years, traditional Malian culture was being challenged by the modernizing influences of the West. So while Sidibé did make many traditional portraits of people in African dress, with elaborate hairstyles and symbolic poses, his images of energetic young people, full of freedom and enthusiasm, have the most interesting stories to tell. (Young man with bell bottoms, bag, and watch, 1977 at right.)

There is an amazing purity and innocence in these pictures. There are kids dressed in their best funky James Brown suits, holding record albums, strutting and showing off. There are crazy sunglasses, big watches, and shiny shoes. There are motorcycles and scooters brought into the studio, for posing and looking cool. Sidibé let each of his subjects create their own narrative with his many props and objects, and what emerged were pictures full of style and attitude and rock and roll infused pride. One of the things I find most intriguing about these portraits is Sidibé's use of clashing patterns, background and floor drops with bold stripes, checks, and polka dots, mixed together with the patterns in his subjects' clothing. It makes for some high octane visual stimulation. (The whole family on a motorcycle, 1962, at right.)

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It is clear that there were some powerful culture and generational conflicts and shifts going on during these times, and the young people were at the center of the revolt. Sidibé also made some memorable pictures of kids at parties and dance clubs (called grins), showing off their best moves and imitating their favorite stars. These too have a sense of unabashed happiness; it's hard not to smile when you see them.

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In recent years, Sidibé has been busy on the awards circuit, picking up the 2003 Hasselblad Award, the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 2007 Venice Bienniale, and most recently, the 2008 ICP Infinity Award, also for lifetime achievement. All this from an artist who was virtually unknown outside Africa a decade or two ago.

Collector's POV: If you are a portrait collector, Sidibé needs to be in your collection. In our opinion, his are images that you will stand the test of time well, without becoming tired.

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Virtually all of Sidibé's photographs that can be found in the secondary market are later prints, made in the late 1990s or early 2000s. These images have been selling in the $2000 to $5000 range at auction, but there haven't been many in the past five years, so it's hard to draw much of a pattern from so few data points.

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Sidibé is represented in New York by Jack Shainman Gallery, site here. There was a 2005 solo show there, complete with images surrounded by elaborately painted glass frames.