Chris Buck, Presence @Foley

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the single room gallery space in the back. All of the works are chromogenic prints, made in 2011. The prints come in two sizes: 20x24 (in editions of 10) and 42x50 (in editions of 1, accompanied by an original signed witness testimony). There are 12 images in the small size and 1 image in the large size on display. A monograph of this body of work has recently been published by Kehrer Verlag (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In our celebrity crazed culture, we have been trained to wait obsessively for images of our favorite bold faced stars and froth at the mouth with frenzy over outrageous pictures of the famous and important. As a result, a veritable army of talented and creative celebrity photographers has sprung up, continually pushing the edge of the visual envelope in the name of ever increasing publicity and promotion. This is what makes Chris Buck's Presence project so unexpected. The big name celebrities are here all right, but they're hiding from view, leaving us with empty rooms and vacant spaces, a sly conceptual middle finger raised to the audience.

My first, and admittedly infantile reaction to these pictures was to try to break the code, to locate the place where in the bathroom where Robert de Niro was concealed or to figure out how Jay Leno hid behind his car in the parking lot, my brain still wired to maniacally search for the star, to hit the button for the endorphin reward. As I circled the gallery and frustration gave way to failure, I began to see the real power of the images. We subconsciously attribute value to places graced by the presence of celebrities, going all the way back to the George Washington slept here phenomenon. Somehow David Lynch's back yard, John Hamm's cinder block parking space, or David Byrne's office (complete with a flat packed Big Suit) seems full of some kind of special essence; we care more about a hotel foyer because Russell Brand is hiding there or are suddenly more interested in a striped shower curtain because Weird Al Yankovic is standing behind it. This is, of course, completely crazy, and yet, the weird aura effect remains - we absolutely see these places differently. The photographs are therefore both of the celebrities and not, simultaneously pictures of their obvious absence and their lingering influence.

I think Buck's inversions are clever and will likely be durably insightful; I can certainly imagine a big museum exhibit of celebrity portraiture ending with one of Buck's images, deftly pulling the rug out from under the previously contented viewers. It's a great example of photographing the unphotographable, exposing the quirky passions and fixations that lurk in our minds.
 

Collector's POV: The prints in the show are priced based on size. The 20x24 prints are $2500 each and the 42x50 prints are $5000 each. Buck's work has little secondary mark history, so gallery retail remains the best/only option for those collectors interested in following up.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Book site (here)
• Features/Reviews: A Photo Editor (here), Telegraph (here), Cool Hunting (here), ArtINFO (here), Huffington Post (here)

Chris Buck, Presence

Through February 24th

 

Foley Gallery

97 Allen Street

New York, NY 10002

Margaret de Lange, Daughters @Foley

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 black and white images, framed in black and not matted, and hung in the single room gallery. All of the prints in the show are chromogenic prints, made between 1994 and 2004, in editions of 10. Most of the prints are 18x24 or reverse, with a few sized 20x20 or 24x24. A monograph of this project has recently been published by Trolley Books (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Sally Mann's provocative photographs of her children have cast an amazingly long shadow across the the subject matter of childhood, particularly that of young girls. I almost didn't come to to see this show because the announcement showed an image of two scantily clothed girls playing in the forest, and my first reaction was "Sally Mann derivative". This was entirely unfair and ignorant on my part, but nonetheless, I was surprised to be confronted by just how strongly Mann's work has created the playing field on which others now have to play.

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Margaret de Lange's black and white photographs of her daughters travel over some of the same childhood terrain that Mann's images did, but with a much grittier and wilder feel. The images are dark and grainy, with deep shadows and contrasts that make the summertime setting seem that much more feral and unruly. The girls make the most of the warm days in the woods by creating their own imaginary games and outdoor adventures, using animal skins, wildflowers, a feather headdress, discarded nylons, a swing, and an old window screen as props. A dead squirrel is hung by a string, while a black dog seems to have been rescued from the water's edge. Dirty feet, skinned knees, and a casual disregard for clothing are the norm. The fur wolf hoods give the entire scene a Where the Wild Things Are authenticity, just on the edge between fun and little animalistic and out of control.

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One of the main criticisms of Mann's work was that it was potentially exploitative, a bit too stagy and posed; as a result, some found some of the nudes altogether too explicit and confrontational. De Lange has avoided this trap in two important ways. First, while there are a handful of images where her daughters stare right into the camera (a few that are quite startling and mezmerizing), for the most part, the pictures are indirect glances and sideways views, where the girls have been captured in play without undue influence or obvious direction. Second, de Lange refrained from publishing the work until she could get the assent of her now grown daughters, who could do so with the adult knowledge of what the display of the pictures might mean. So while there are nudes on view here, the idea that the girls have been misused in some inappropriate way is entirely (and thankfully) absent.

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Overall, these pictures seem like illustrations from a modern day Scandinavian folktale of growing up: two girls wander out into the forest to play, survive a series of exciting and harrowing adventures (large and small), and emerge on the other side as strong, confident, grown women.

Collector's POV: The prints in the show are reasonably priced at $1800 each. De Lange's work has no history in the secondary markets, so interested collectors will need to follow up at retail. While these works don't fit into our particular collection, I think de Lange's images would form a nice foil to Mann's work (an intriguing back and forth could be set up via some smart pairings) and would obviously fit more broadly into collections of childhood/portraits.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Reviews: British Journal of Photography (here), Examiner.com (here)

Margaret de Lange, Daughters
Through January 30th

Foley Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Martin Klimas, Flowers @Foley

JTF (just the facts): 7 color pigment prints, each 32x24, six installed in the main gallery, and a single image shown down in the first floor entryway. We were told that the show normally had several more images on display, but that they had been taken down and shipped to Photo LA. Negatives from 2006 and 2007, in editions of 5. A slim book detailing this body of work is available from the gallery for $30. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: The floral images of German photographer Martin Klimas can most clearly be described as a mashup of Robert Mapplethorpe and Harold Edgerton. In each picture, an elegant floral bouquet in a striking vase is set against a saturated color background. The unexpected part of this conceit is that the vase is in the process of exploding, having been captured at the exact instant of disintegration by careful stop motion photography. The result is a surprisingly interesting contrast between the quiet beauty of the flowers and the violent destruction of the vase. Prior to visiting this show, we thought this concept sounded a bit contrived (was this just a stunt?), but we found the execution of the idea to be first rate, and the pictures are quite a bit better and more visually engaging than we had expected.

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The artist's website can be found here.

Collector's POV: As collectors of flower and botanical photographs, we like to think we have seen pretty much everything that has ever been done in this genre, but these works by Klimas are indeed something new and different. The best of the images are to be found in the book, as the exhibit itself has been depleted by the demands of the fair circuit. At $3000 apiece, one of these would make an attractive (and relatively inexpensive) contrast to a color Mapplethorpe floral, if hung in tandem.

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

Martin Klimas, Flowers

Through January 17th

Foley Gallery

547 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10001