Uta Barth @Bonakdar

JTF (just the facts): This show contains a pairing of recent projects, displayed in separate rooms. The main gallery contains works from the project ... and to draw a bright white line with light from 2011. There are 10 works on view, each made up of one to three 38x56 panels. The prints are inkjet prints face mounted against matte acrylic, framed in white and unmatted, in editions of 6+2AP. The back gallery contains works from the project Compositions of Light on White, also from 2011. There are 8 single panel works on view, ranging in size from 24x23 to 41x48. The prints are inkjet prints in white lacquered wooden frames, in editions of 6+2AP. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Uta Barth's newest works explore the idea of using focused light as a drawing mechanism. Her pictures turn luminous lines and areas of white brightness into a discrete medium, like ink or paint, that can be carefully controlled by the hand of the artist, not in the sense of a photogram or a darkroom manipulation, but in the context of straight photographic image making. In two separate projects, she has used curtains and window blinds to direct the incoming light, creating ethereal shapes and forms that are projected onto different underlying surfaces.

The walls of the main gallery space are covered by works that chart the passing of time across an afternoon. A thin white line of sunlight streams in through gauzy textured curtains, creating a wiggly, heartbeat-like form projected through the undulations of the transparent fabric, reminiscent of Minor White's Windowsill Daydreaming (here). This white line slowly expands into a wide ribbon as the time passes, in the end becoming a thick stripe of sinuous diffusing light, almost like waves on a seashore or Morris Louis' washes of watery paint. It's an extremely simple construct that provides a graceful and meditative view of the abstract movement of time.

I found the images in the back room to have more complexity and visual punch. In these works, Barth uses the blinds to generate squares and rectangles of radiant projected sunlight, which are then directed onto flat white closet doors and arrays of drawers. The black cracks along the edges of the storage areas create linear geometries, which are then covered in additional layers of brilliant white shapes, creating flattened planes of Mondrian-like abstraction. Barth subtly changes the camera angle from image to image, bringing in more or less of the perspective of the drawers, in a few allowing the view down the hallway to become a dark stripe along the edge of the frame. These are quiet, intellectual pictures, playing with reference points and internal geometries, examining shimmering light as a defining overlayer.

As always, there is a calmness to Barth's heady explorations. She continues to probe the edges of perception and visual recognition with a meticulous sense of restraint, in this case, proving that elemental light can be an inventive medium in and of itself.

Collector's POV: The prices of the prints from ... and to draw a bright white line with light are dependent on the number of panels in the work: 1 panel at $26000, 2 panels at $36000, or 3 panels at $46000. The prices of the prints from Compositions of Light on White are based on size, ranging from $18000 to $26000. Barth's photographs have become more available in the secondary markets in recent years, with auction prices ranging between $3000 and $38000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Prior Exhibit: Art Institute of Chicago, 2011 (here)
• Feature: Daily Beast (here)

Uta Barth
Through December 22nd

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

521 West 21st Street

New York, NY 10011

Auction: Photographs, November 2, 2010 @Bonhams

Bonhams' various owner Photographs sale next week brings together its customary West coast flavored selection of lower end material. The auction contains a number of Cole Weston prints of Edward Weston negatives. Overall, there are 110 photographs on offer, with a total High estimate of $748500.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 100
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $517500

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 9
Total Mid Estimate: $171000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 1
Total High Estimate: $60000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 38, Ansel Adams, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, 1927, at $40000-60000. (Image at right, top, via Bonhams.)

Below is the list of photographers represented by 3 or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Edward Weston (14)
Ansel Adams (11)
Harry Callahan (8)
Brett Weston (6)
Philippe Halsman (4)
Herb Ritts (4)
Ruth Bernhard (3)
Edward Curtis (3)
Andre Kertesz (3)
Terry O'Neill (3)
RISD portfolios (3)
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For our own collection, I quite liked lot 107, Uta Barth, Untitled (05.6), 2005. (Image at right, bottom, via Bonhams.)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Photographs
November 2nd

Bonhams
580 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Uta Barth: ... to walk without destination and to see only to see. @Tanya Bonakdar

JTF (just the facts): This show contains a combination of current work and reprints of work from decades ago. The main gallery contains 8 color works, all made in 2010, each a diptych or triptych. In these works, the left panel inkjet print is 41x32 and the right panel inkjet print(s) are 41x46. The works are printed in editions of 6+2 and framed in white with no mat. The rear gallery contains 7 works (ranging from 1 to 16 series prints each), made in 1979-1982 and printed in 2010. The black and white inkjet prints (framed in white with no mat) are all roughly 11x9, and are also made in editions of 6+2. A new monograph of the artist's work, The Long Now, was recently published by Gregory Miller and is available from the gallery. A companion exhibit of the same bodies of work is now on display at 1301PE Gallery in Los Angeles (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: I've recently been reading a book called Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, by Margaret Livingstone (here). As you might imagine from the title, it covers the technical underpinnings of how our human vision system works (rods and cones etc.), how the eye and brain connect and interact, how luminance and color are processed, and how central and peripheral vision work. It then goes on to show how various artists across the history of art have used color mixing, contrast and other optical techniques to achieve different effects. The reason I have been reading this book is that I have, of late, become more interested in the underpinnings of visual perception, as it relates to how we interact with and understand photography. Given this background study, you could say I was fully primed to enjoy Uta Barth's excellent new show, as her work has always thoughtfully explored the boundaries and ambiguities of seeing.

The large main gallery space is filled with diptychs and triptychs that have a common structure. In one panel, we look down at the sidewalk from the photographer's point of view, casting shadows across the field of vision that become two thick parallel lines. In the other panel or panels, we look up into the sky, where the blurs of hallucinatory trees hover overhead. In the downward looking shots, we often see the trace of a shoe or foot, the cracks and lines of the sidewalk, or stray leaves that dapple the greyness, giving us a hint to the perspective, but it is the strong vertical shadows that run edge to edge from top to bottom that seem strange and illusory, especially in the images that have been reversed as negatives. The upward shots have a calligraphic elegance in their shifting fogginess. Branches, leaves, berries and flowers have been abstracted into thin black lines and splashes of color - red, or yellow, or green, or blue, flashed against a blinding white sky. These upward glances seem to oscillate and vibrate, as if we were catching them out of the corner of our eye, out of focus, but still entirely identifiable. When the up and down views are juxtaposed together, there is movement, and wonder, and lyrical simplicity.

The smaller, black and white images in the back rewind thirty years, when Barth was just beginning her explorations of light, space, and time: light streams in through curtains and doorways, chairs are moved around a studio, and shadows divide a wall. Compositionally, the photographs are often consciously unbalanced, with large expanses of emptiness (floor, snow, wall) punctuated by the fragment of an object. It is easy to see where her conceptual ideas began, and then to walk back into the main gallery and see where those same motifs have evolved over her career.

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I must admit that as I stood in the middle of the main gallery and let the new works wash over me, I had that uncommon rush of positive feeling, the nodding head, that giddy "aha" that said these pictures were tuned just right. Maybe it was my recent biology diversion that made me acutely aware of Barth's controlled use of my vision, but regardless, I came away enchanted by the proof that simplicity can still be thrillingly new.

Collector's POV: The color diptychs and triptychs in the show are priced at $30000 each. The smaller black and white works range in price from $5500 to $30000, based on the number of prints in the work. Barth's photographs have recently become available in the secondary markets, with a handful of lots coming up for sale in any given year; prices have ranged between $3000 and $38000.

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

Transit Hub:

• UC Riverside faculty page (here)
• Review: Frieze, 2008 (here)
• Interview: Journal of Contemporary Art, 1996 (here)

Uta Barth: ... to walk without destination and to see only to see.
Through June 19th

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011