Geraldo de Barros,
Laura Letinsky and eight collage artists at the Photographers'
Gallery
18th Jan- 7th
April
Three exhibitions
of Geraldo de Barros, Laura Letinsky and other collage artists are now
open at the Photographer's Gallery. These exhibitions give a wide overview of
the collage practice from 1950s to the contemporary time.
Brazilian artist
Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998) is one of the
significant figures of Brazilian modernist art scene. In the exhibition 'What
Remains’ his photographic and collage works from two series belonging to different periods in the
artist's work are presented. After the completion of the first series
'Fotoformas' in 1950, de Barros abandoned photography, and returned to it only
in the beginning of nineties. The resulting series 'Sobras' draws a connection
between past and present through the period of over forty years.
In
Portuguese 'Sobras' means 'Remains', and this series gave the name to the
exhibition. What remains - is the artist’s memory of small things and events
that once took place in his life. Also it is something that is left
from the photograph when it is cut by the artist's hand. De Barros is
undoubtedly an artist of the miniatures. While his medium-size photography
focuses on visual effects of black and white abstraction, his smaller
photographs and collages oscillate between the language of
abstraction and figurative images. Geraldo de Barros discovered an
interesting phenomenon: miniature photos no longer document reality; they
modify the very content of the documented image. The change of scale is used to
provoke a specific feeling from a viewer, which resides between attention to
details and some kind of nostalgia of insignificant moments of life.
The effort, that a viewer makes to see the details, makes him approach closer
to an art work, and this ruination of borders requires certain privacy of
interaction with a photograph. The artist emphasizes this privacy by adding
symbolical frames inside of the picture: sometimes he draws a frame with a ball
pen; sometimes he glues the black tape directly on the photo collage. This
action has a definite reference to the constructivist works, but the impression
produced by this photographs applies rather to emotional than to rational. The
motifs that Geraldo de Barros uses are simple and reminiscent of the amateur
photos. Every simple object can become an object of his interest: streets,
houses, passers-by, windows, or snowdrifts.
The
exhibition of the Canadian
artist Laura Letinsky (born 1962) 'Ill Form and Void Full' presents
photographic works in a particular technique invented by the artist. It
combines a real still life with a photographed collage. The collages of
Letinsky explore the boundary between reality and illusion, material
objects and their visual representations. The exhibition
consists of ten photographs of the mix of modified magazine cuts-out and
household objects. The white background is used to eliminate any additional
context and to create a feeling of emptiness surrounding these objects. The
artist’s work focuses on conceptual opposition of absence and presence. The way
of naming the works follows the same aim: all of the photographs are untitled,
though each one has its own number.
In the last floor
of the Photographers' Gallery the exhibition 'Perspectives on Collage' by
eight collage artists concludes the tour. The participants of the
exhibition are C.K. Rajan, Jan
Svoboda, Peggy Franck, Nicole Wermers, Batia Suter, Anna
Parkina, Roy Arden, Clunie Reid. They presented photo collages in a
variety of artistic media, including installation and sculpture.
The journey though
the three exhibitions at the Photographers' Gallery gives a fresh and
involving perspective on the historical development of the media of
collage and various approaches to it. It is a must-see for all people
interested in experimental collage and contemporary photography.
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