Shannon Ebner: A Language of Exposures @Wallspace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 6 black and white photographic works (including 1 diptych and 1 set of 18 prints), framed in black and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and the smaller back room. All of the prints are Epson prints, individually sized between 24x20 and 75x43. The show also includes 1 single channel video (29 seconds long) displayed on a screen. All of the works are available in editions of 5 and were made between 2009 and 2013. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: Shannon Ebner's new show continues her ongoing investigation of the intersection of photography and language. Her constructed images shuttle back and forth between legibilty and abstraction, parsing language into letters and symbols and arranging these objects into diagramatic systems that can be both "read" and enjoyed for their formal qualities. Cinder blocks, cardboard, and wood are at once sculpturally textural raw materials and linguistically representative signs.

 

The largest work on view (covering the better part of two walls) explodes the words of a poem (itself stitched together from phrases found in the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat) into an array of single capital letters, which are then arranged in spaced grids that can be read with some attentive effort. The organization of the letters frustrates easy understanding, pushing the work back toward repetition and black and white pattern, like a code to be deciphered. Ebner breaks this idea down further with a photograph of elemental shapes made of cinder blocks (squares, circles, triangles, and other angled forms) that seem like they should be readable in some way, but retreat into graphical linear symbols. The image in the back room captures a black and white peg board tool template, where silhouettes of chains, hooks, and dangling pulleys become their own kind of workshop hieroglyphics, while the video work interleaves male and female torsos into a jittering, spinning combination of fleetingly identifiable parts. In every work, symbols are constructed that take on multiple, layered roles and meanings, sometimes legible and sometimes obscure.

 

Ebner's high contrast photographs smartly test the limits of visual writing, unpacking and reconsidering how forms become systems and systems become representative language. They ask for and require from the viewer a puzzle maker's cerebral curiosity, continually breaking down and reconnecting while looking, searching for arrangements that fit together and texts that can be decoded.

 

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced based on size and number of prints in the work, starting at $8000 for the smallest single image and ending at $75000 for the 18 image piece. Intermediate prices include $12000 and $16000, and the video is priced at $10000.  Ebner's work has not yet reached the secondary markets with any regularity, so gallery retail is likely the best/only option for those collectors interested in following up.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Exhibits: Hammer Museum, 2011 (here), Whitney Biennial, 2008 (here)
• Feature: Artforum, 2009 (here)

 

Shannon Ebner: A Language of Exposures

Through March 23rd

 

Wallspace

619 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10011

Daniel Gordon: Still Lifes, Portraits & Parts @Wallspace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographs, framed in black and unmatted, and hung in the main gallery space, the smaller back room, and the office area. The prints are chromogenic prints, ranging in size from 16x20 to 46x36 (or reverse), available in editions of 3, from 2010/2011. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: When I was first exposed to the work of Daniel Gordon at the 2009 version of MoMA's New Photography show (here), I remember thinking that the images were somewhat grotesque and off-putting, with a psychological roughness that made them hard to get close to. In the intervening years since that exhibit, I'm not sure whether Gordon's work has become slightly more refined or whether my interest in photography that is challenging and unexpected has increased (or both), but I certainly found his newest batch of pictures to be rich and exciting.

As a reminder, Gordon's process is both elaborate and resolutely physical. He starts with appropriated digital imagery (both sharp and pixelated/distorted), which is then printed out onto actual paper. These prints are then collaged together into three dimensional tabletop sculptures, with torn edges, fishing line, and dollops of glue left bare as evidence. The final constructed results are then photographed using a view camera, providing extra clarity and detail.

Gordon's portraits reuse elements of Cubism in a modern way: his faces are made of disassembled, mismatched scraps of features, which are then reconstructed and layered in non-obvious ways, mixing male and female, hard and soft, and often employing multiple conflicting angles. His newest portraits seem tighter than the ones I saw a few years ago, less jolting for the sake of shock value and more nuanced and interconnected. His still lifes of flowers and fruit take a well-worn genre and introduce combinations of texture and color that upend expectations: a vase is simultaneously crumpled and out of focus, peaches are both pink and blue, their roundness both flat and crinkled. And a third group of pictures moves more toward crafty sculptural abstraction, with Dada-like side silhouetted faces that cast shadows across intermediate spaces.

What I like about these photographs is that there are some risks being taken. The images are proof of a constant process of reuse and reformulation, less in the hackneyed digital sense, but more in the manner of fragmentation and reassembly, of seeing photographs as open-ended, malleable raw material to be employed in more complex and original visual descriptions.
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Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced between $3500 and $6500, based on size. Gordon's work is not yet widely available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only real option for interested collectors at this point.
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By the way, this show was hung quite sparsely, with large expanses of empty white wall in between the prints. To my eye, the rooms could have held a few more images, which assuming they were available, would have made for a more powerful overall impression of Gordon's recent work.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)

Daniel Gordon: Still Lifes, Portraits & Parts

Through December 17th

Wallspace
619 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10011

John Divola, Trees for the Forest @Wallspace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 26 black and white and color photographs, variously framed and matted, and hung in the main gallery space, the smaller back room, and the office area. The show contains work from 1971 to 2008. (Installation shots at right.)

The following series and projects are represented in the exhibit, with numbers of images and details in parentheses:

San Fernando Valley (6 images, vintage gelatin silver prints, each 6x9, 1971-1973)
Vandalism (5 images, vintage gelatin silver prints, each 7x7, 1974)
Zuma (5 images, archival pigment prints on rag paper, each 21x26, in editions of 10, 1977/2006)
As Far As I Could Get, Running (3 images, archival pigment prints on rag paper, each 60x40, in editions of 3, 1996)
Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert (1 set of 4 images, gelatin silver prints, each 16x23, in editions of 3, 1996-2001)
Abandoned Painting (1 image, archival pigment print on rag paper, 40x50, edition of 3, 2007)
Dark Star (2 images, archival pigment prints on rag paper, each 40x50, in editions of 3, 2008)

Comments/Context: This strong show gathers together a sampling of work by John Divola covering nearly forty years, mixing some of his well known projects from the 1970s with several more recent efforts. Surprisingly, this exhibit isn't a mini-retrospective exactly; instead it explores a pair of important conceptual forms, with high quality, back and forth examples from across Divola's long career.

The first framework is a classic from the world of California conceptual photography: the quirky, unexpected series. Spin back to the early 1970s and you'll see Divola's black and white deadpan documentary images of women watering their lawns with hoses, complete with a splash of irony and oddity simmering underneath the surface. Fast forward a few decades, and the series form has now become now a grid of threatening black blurs, which turn out to be dogs chasing Divola's car as he travels across the desert. Even better are the images taken with a time delayed shutter, where Divola runs directly away from the camera until his ten second head start expires. The settings vary from woodland paths to deserted roads, but the centered framing and arrow-straight vanishing point remain the same. These works are at once warm and slightly ridiculous, with a strong, thought-provoking questioning of how time operates in photography. This body of work was also assembled into an intimate hand sized artist's book which I came across a year or two ago; it's a spectacular little gem worth looking out for.

The second framework explores the idea of manipulated environments, where the artist has deliberately intervened and altered the particular site, adding a layer of performance and sculpture to photography. Back in the 1970s, Divola used patterns of spray paint and piles of construction debris to modify and stage abandoned houses, creating chaotic scenes almost like installations. His Vandalism series explored these spaces in crisp black and white tonalities, while his now-famous Zuma series captured them in vibrant, saturated color. Even today, both have a sense of energy and riskiness (almost latent horror) that keeps them fresh. Divola has reprised this approach with his contemporary Dark Star series, where he has painted glossy black circles in empty houses, photographing them from different distances and in different light conditions, the blackness becoming alternately absorbent and reflective. These works play with geometries, but also have a symbolic sense of ominous foreboding.

Together, these various projects show Divola to have been remarkably consistent over the years, even when using disparate methods and visual vocabularies. Every series on display has strong conceptual underpinnings, each idea embodied in striking and memorable images. While Divola's work may not be underrated, I do think that it surely deserves more attention than it generally gets. As such, this show should be a potent reminder for those New Yorkers who may have overlooked or forgotten his many talents.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows, based on the series or project:

San Fernando Valley: $10200 each or NFS 
Vandalism: $8200 each

Zuma: $4400 each

As Far As I Could Get, Running: $10200 each

Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert: set of 4 $10000

Abandoned Painting: $10000

Dark Star: $9000 each

Divola's work has only been intermittently available at auction in recent years. Prices have generally ranged between $1000 and $10000, but these few data points may not be particularly representative of the market for his work.

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

• Artist site (here)
• Review: NY Times (here), LA Times, 2009 (here)

John Divola, Trees for the Forest
Through June 18th

Wallspace
619 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10011