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

Photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 3 of 3

This is Part 3 of my review of the photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair. Part 1 can be found here, along with some background information on the fair and an explanation of the format I'm using for the the booth by booth details. Part 2 can be found here.


Purple Section

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (here): Barney Kulok (1)

Kaufmann Repetto (here): Shannon Ebner (1). Another entry in the "built to be photographed" category; this large graphic symbol in cinder blocks by Ebner was priced at $12000.

Rampa (here): Huseyin Bahri Alptekin (3)

Galerie Eva Presenhuber (here): Steven Shearer (3), Amy Granat (1). These floral photograms by Granat are reminiscent of similar images made by Kunie Sugiura, although these have been cropped, reoriented, and transformed into a repetitive, high contrast grid. The work was priced at $20000.

Regina Gallery (here): Nikolay Bakharev (5). I've seen a few of these engaging 1970s beach portraits from Bakharev of late, and they're starting to grow on me. They were priced at $3000 each.

Maureen Paley (here): James Welling (2), Wolfgang Tillmans (2), David Salle (1), Gillian Wearing (1). If there was any one photographer whose work was ubiquitous at this fair, it was Wolfgang Tillmans. This was the best image of his that I saw (due to the complex use of color), a new one priced at $57000 and already sold.

Stuart Shave/Modern Art (here): Linder (10)

Galerie Perrotin (here): Sophie Calle (4 diptychs)

Galleria Continua (here): Mona Hatoum (1 Polaroid triptych). A simple idea, well executed - deadpan portraits with hair exploded by static electricity. This unique set of three prints by Hatoum was priced at $30000.

Frith Street Gallery (here): John Riddy (1), Tacita Dean (1 set of 14). Extra large versions of these Dean film strip works were recently on view at the Tate Modern. The set of 14 prints (offset not photographic) was priced at £45500.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (here): Vik Muniz (1). Washington Crossing the Delaware in Muniz' most recent style, a dense collage of magazine scrap imagery. Priced at $45000, and not surprisingly, already sold.

Galerie Bucholz (here): Wolfgang Tillmans (2), Sam Lewitt (1 set of 10). I liked Lewitt's layered NY Times transparencies, algorithmically reconstructed and subtracted to zero. Priced at $18000.

Kukje Gallery (here): Candida Hofer (1), Jenny Holzer (1)

Alison Jacques Gallery (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (3). I had never seen these particular Mapplethorpe florals before. The single blossoms are bathed in ghostly, almost garish, colored light. Priced at $35000.

Sprüth Magers (here): Andreas Gursky (1), Astrid Klein (4 collages), Thomas Demand (1), John Baldessari (1), Cindy Sherman (1). The reason I included this $285000 Baldessari image in this review has nothing to do with the pig, or the hands, or the composition really. What is impossible to see in this installation shot is that the work had surprising depth; the different colored portions are built up in inch thick layers. Yet another example of reimagining photography with sculptural qualities.

Pink Section

Wallspace (here): Daniel Gordon (1), Shannon Ebner (1), John Divola (1). Textures and patterns abound in this new work from Gordon, playing with idea of the sculptural bust, priced at $5800.

Galerie Neu (here): Bernadette Corporation (3), Tom Burr (1)

Galeria Fortes Vilaça (here): Jac Leirner (1)

Victoria Miro (here): Alex Hartley (1), William Eggleston (1), Isaac Julien (1 diptych)

303 Gallery (here): Hans-Peter Feldman (4), Collier Schorr (1), Stephen Shore (1 set of 8). This is an early conceptual series by Shore from the late 1960s (recently reprinted), where he stands and rotates in a circle, the desert background changing in each shot. Probably been done before and since, but still effective. Priced at $25000 for the set.

White Cube (here): Jeff Wall (1), Gilbert & George (1 set of 9)

Galerie Martin Janda (here): Roman Signer (1 set of 5, 1)

Vision is Elastic. Thought is Elastic. @Murray Guy

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of 37 works by 14 different photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung in the two main gallery spaces and the back office area. The works were made between 1968 and 2011. The exhibit was curated by photographers Moyra Davey and Zoe Leonard. (Marginal installation shots at right.)

The following photographers have been included in this show, with the number of images and their details in parentheses:

Josh Brand (2 diptychs, gelatin silver prints/c-prints, 2010)
Roy Colmer (7 artist's books (displayed on widow sill), 1976-2009)
Pradeep Dalal (3 books/brochures/inkjet prints (displayed on shelf), 2009, 1 c-print, 2007)
Shannon Ebner (1 set of 10 c-prints, 2009)
Joy Episalla (1 pigment print, 2011)
William Gedney (1 gelatin silver print, 1967)
Roni Horn (1 set of 3 offset lithographs, 1999)
Katherine Hubbard (1 set of 24 black and white c-prints (displayed on shelf), 2011)
Babette Mangolte (1 gelatin silver print, 1976/2011)
Mark Morrisroe (1 black and white print from Polaroid negative, 1981, 5 issues DIRT magazine (displayed in case), 1975-1977)
Adrian Piper (1 photo-text collage, 1983)
Claire Pentecost (2 palladium prints, 2000)
James Welling (8 gelatin silver prints, 1977-1986)
David Wojnarowicz (1 gelatin silver print with silkscreen text, 1980)

Comments/Context: I've often written about my particular distaste for lazy gallery group shows which gather loosely connected works under some meaningless theme. I continually struggle with whether I am more annoyed, insulted or just plain bored by such forgettable endeavors, and regular readers here will know that I tend to avoid reviewing the vast majority of gallery group shows of photography, since I can hardly ever find anything nice to say. An exception to this general rule is the brainy, thought-provoking group show Vision is Elastic. Thought is Elastic. now on view at Murray Guy. This show starts with an intriguing premise (the artistic relationship between words and images) and then probes that concept from different angles, with each carefully selected photographic work providing an individual voice on the subject. 

The thematic construct here is dizzyingly layered: there are images of texts, images with writing in the margins, and texts overlaid and combined with images. There is the idea of the notebook, of notebook pages, where images act like a kind of shorthand, perhaps as a journal or diary (or artist's book). There is the idea of the library (as a physical place, as a storehouse of ideas, and as representation of personality), of books (as objects and representations of ideas), and of footnotes and textual recombinations and allusions. There is the idea of the surface, of writing, both with ink and with light. It's a fascinatingly heady brew of artistic process, image making, and wordy introspection.

While I didn't necessarily resonate with every image on display in its stand alone incarnation, when mixed and juxtaposed, the whole is remarkably larger and more rich than the sum of its parts. James Welling's paired images of Connecticut landscapes and pages filled with the flowing script of a 19th century journal provide a sense of nostalgic place and time. Roni Horn's annotated waterscapes have the feel of a busy brain, jumping from one idea to another and back again. Shannon Ebner's cool spectrum of blank notebook pages brought me back to the quiet emptiness of creation. And Pradeep Dalal's combinations of Indian architectural books and crumpled portraits left me probing other unseen connections. Together, the many ideas jostle and intermingle, creating a composite where every piece adds to the overall understanding of the theme.

This a group show where the curators have gotten beyond the "assortment of pictures" trap and focused the viewer on a central thesis; as such, the included works are less about themselves, but more about how they support the line of thinking being argued. What we're really seeing then is the opinions and interpretations of the organizers, and in this case, that set of ideas is robust, sophisticated, and satisfyingly cerebral.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows, by photographer:

Josh Brand (Diptychs either $6000 or $7000)
Roy Colmer (Not for sale)
Pradeep Dalal (Book/print combos either $1500 or $2500, c-print $2000)
Shannon Ebner (Set of 10 prints, $15000)
Joy Episalla ($4000)
William Gedney ($4500)
Roni Horn (Set of 3 prints, $90000)
Katherine Hubbard (Set of 24 prints, $2400)
Babette Mangolte ($4500)
Mark Morrisroe (Not for sale)
Adrian Piper (20000 Euros)
Claire Pentecost ($2500 each)
James Welling ($2000 each)
David Wojnarowicz ($125000)

While the work of Horn, Welling and Wojnarowicz can all be found in the secondary markets from time to time, the majority of the photographers in this show have little or no auction history. As such, gallery retail is likely the best option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

• Blind Spot 43 (here)

Vision is Elastic. Thought is Elastic.
Through June 4th

Murray Guy
453 West 17th Street
New York, NY 10011