Aperture's Blog, page 200
February 25, 2013
February 22, 2013
Aperture Magazine Instagram Competition
Love the relaunched Aperture magazine?
Show us! We invite you to send us your portraits—of yourself, friends, or family members—showcasing a copy of the Spring 2013 issue of Aperture magazine for the chance to win* a one-year subscription to Aperture magazine.
Submit often! Share your portraits on Instagram and Twitter with the tag #myaperturemag now through April 2, 2013.
Participants may also e-mail submissions as a link or attachment to blog [at] aperture.org. Please include “My Aperture Mag” in the subject line.
*For additional information about the contest, see our Official Rules below.
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No purchase necessary. A purchase will not increase your chances of winning.
1. Eligibility: The Aperture magazine “My Aperture Mag” Subscription Giveaway Contest (the “Contest”) is only open to legal residents of the United States who are at least thirteen (13) years old. Employees of Aperture magazine, its parent, subsidiaries, or affiliates, as well as the immediate family (spouse, parents, siblings, and children) and household members of each such employee, are not eligible to enter.
2. Sponsor: The Contest is sponsored by Aperture Foundation (the “Sponsor”), located at 547 West 27th Street, New York, N.Y. 10001. The Contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and/or any other social media website or platform on which it may appear. Any questions, comments, or complaints regarding the Contest should be directed to Sponsor.
3. Agreement to Official Rules: By entering the Contest, you indicate your full and unconditional agreement to, and acceptance of, (a) these Official Rules and (b) Sponsor’s decisions regarding the Contest, which are final and binding. Winning a prize is contingent upon fulfilling all requirements set forth herein.
4. How to Enter: To enter: (1) Take a portrait (of yourself, a friend, or family member) while displaying a copy of the Spring 2013 issue of Aperture magazine (#210); (2) upload your picture through your Instagram or Twitter account using the hashtag #myaperturemag. Only submissions posted between 9:00 a.m. ET on Friday, February 22, 2013, and 6:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, April 2, 2013 (the “Entry Period”), will be eligible. Sponsor’s computer is the official time-keeping device for the Contest.
5. Content Requirements: Your Entry must not: (a) violate any third party rights, including, but not limited to, copyrights, trademark rights, or rights of privacy and publicity; (b) contain defamatory statements; (c) include threats to any person, place, business, or group; (d) be obscene or indecent; (e) depict any risky behavior, as determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion; (f) contain any third party trademarks or logos; and (g) have been entered in any other contest or have been published or distributed in any other media. Sponsor reserves the right to refuse to post any Entry for any reason.
6. Entrant’s Warranties and Representations: By submitting an Entry, you warrant and represent that: (a) the Entry is an original work created solely by you for entry in the Contest; (b) you own all rights to the Entry; (c) to the extent the Entry depicts any individual or features the voice of any individual, you are the individual pictured and heard in the submission, or, alternatively, that you have obtained written permission from each person appearing in the Entry to grant the rights to Sponsor described in the “Sponsor’s Rights to Entries” section below, and can make written copies of such permissions available to Sponsor upon request; and (d) the Entry complies with all requirements of these Official Rules.
7. Sponsor’s Rights to Entries: By participating, you: (a) irrevocably grant Sponsor, its agents, licensees, and assigns the unconditional and perpetual (non-exclusive) right and permission to reproduce, encode, store, copy, transmit, publish, post, broadcast, display, publicly perform, adapt, modify, create derivative works of, exhibit, and otherwise use your Entry as-is or as-edited (with or without using your name) in any media throughout the world for any purpose, without limitation, and without additional review, compensation, or approval from you or any other party; (b) forever waive any rights of copyrights, trademark rights, privacy rights, and any other legal or moral rights that may preclude Sponsor’s use of your Entry, or require any further permission for Sponsor to use the Entry; and (c) agree not to instigate, support, maintain, or authorize any action, claim, or lawsuit against Sponsor on the grounds that any use of the Entry, or any derivative works, infringes any of your rights as creator of the Entry, including, without limitation, copyrights, trademark rights, and moral rights.
8. Selection of Potential Winners: After the Entry Period, the Sponsor will evaluate all Entries and select three (3) potential winners based on the following Judging Criteria: originality and creativity. If the Sponsor suspects any fraud, tampering, or any activity that the Sponsor believes may impair the integrity of the entry process, the Sponsor may, in its sole discretion, select an additional potential winner.
9. Notification and Requirements of Potential Winners: Sponsor will attempt to notify the potential winner within one (1) business day of the date of selection. Except where prohibited, a potential winner may be required to complete and return an affidavit of eligibility, a liability/publicity release, and a release in which he/she irrevocably assigns and transfers to Sponsor any and all usage rights, title, and interest in Entry, including, without limitation, all copyrights and trademark rights, and waives all moral rights in the Entry. If a potential winner is a minor, his/her parent or legal guardian will be required to sign the documents on his/her behalf. If a potential winner fails to sign and return these documents within the required time period, an alternate potential winner may be selected in his/her place according to the Judging Criteria. Only three (3) alternate potential winners may be contacted.
10. Prize: One (1) winner will be selected. The winner will receive a one-year subscription to Aperture magazine. The approximate retail value of the prize is $75.00. In the case that the winner is a current Aperture magazine subscriber, the current subscription will be extended one year. A winner is responsible for paying any applicable income taxes and any and all other costs and expenses not listed above. Any prize details not specified above will be determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion. A prize may not be transferred and must be accepted as awarded. You may not request cash or a substitute prize; however, Sponsor reserves the right to substitute a prize with another prize of equal or greater value if the prize is not available for any reason, as determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion.
11. General Conditions: In the event that the operation, security, or administration of the Contest is impaired in any way for any reason, including, but not limited to fraud, virus, or other technical problem, Sponsor may, in its sole discretion, either: (a) suspend the Contest to address the impairment and then resume the Contest in a manner that best conforms to the spirit of these Official Rules; or (b) award the prize(s) according to the Judging Criteria from among the eligible entries received up to the time of the impairment. Sponsor reserves the right in its sole discretion to disqualify any individual it finds to be tampering with the entry process or the operation of the Contest or to be acting in violation of these Official Rules or in an unsportsmanlike or disruptive manner. Any attempt by any person to undermine the legitimate operation of the Contest may be a violation of criminal and civil law, and, should such an attempt be made, Sponsor reserves the right to seek damages from any such person to the fullest extent permitted by law. Failure by Sponsor to enforce any term of these Official Rules shall not constitute a waiver of that provision. Proof of sending any communication to Sponsor by mail shall not be deemed proof of receipt of that communication by Sponsor. In the event of a dispute as to any online entry, the authorized account holder of the email address, Twitter Handle, or other user name used to enter will be deemed to be the participant. The Contest is subject to federal, state, and local laws and regulations and is void where prohibited.
12. Release and Limitations of Liability: By participating in the Contest, you agree to release and hold harmless Sponsor, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and/or any other social media website or platform on which the Contest may appear, their respective parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, and each of their respective officers, directors, employees, and agents (the “Released Parties”) from and against any claim or cause of action arising out of participation in the Contest or receipt or use of any prize, including, but not limited to: (a) unauthorized human intervention in the Contest; (b) technical errors related to computers, servers, providers, or telephone, or network lines; (c) printing errors; (d) lost, late, postage-due, misdirected, or undeliverable mail; (e) errors in the administration of the Contest or the processing of entries; or (f) injury or damage to persons or property which may be caused, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, from entrant’s participation in the Contest or receipt or use of any prize. You further agree that in any cause of action, the Released Parties’ liability will be limited to the cost of entering and participating in the Contest, and in no event shall the Released Parties be liable for attorney’s fees. You waive the right to claim any damages whatsoever, including, but not limited to, punitive, consequential, direct, or indirect damages.
13. Privacy and Publicity: Any information you submit as part of the Contest is provided to the Sponsor, and not to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or any other social media site or platform on which the Contest may appear, and it will be used for purposes of this Contest and treated in accordance with Sponsor’s Privacy Policy. Except where prohibited, participation in the Contest constitutes an entrant’s consent to Sponsor’s use of his/her name, likeness, voice, opinions, biographical information, and state of residence for promotional purposes in any media without further payment or consideration.
14. Disputes: Except where prohibited, you agree that any and all disputes, claims and causes of action arising out of, or connected with, the Contest or any prize awarded shall be resolved individually, without resort to any form of class action, and exclusively by the appropriate court located in New York. All issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation and enforceability of these Official Rules, your rights and obligations, or the rights and obligations of Sponsor in connection with the Contest, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of New York, without giving effect to any choice of law or conflict of law rules (whether of New York or any other jurisdiction), which would cause the application of the laws of any jurisdiction other than New York.
15. Results: To request a winners list, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Aperture Foundation Social Media Department, 547 West 27th Street, 4th floor, New York, N.Y. 10001.
February 19, 2013
Editors’ Note from Spring 2013 Issue
What should a photography magazine be? This question propelled a long conversation at Aperture Foundation about how we can navigate the next chapter of photography’s evolution and make a vital contribution as a print publication. The new Aperture was created with two steady assumptions in mind: First, that in a time when photography is abundant on digital platforms, images in print—ink on paper—continue to offer a uniquely actual experience. Second, that a magazine can engage photography’s changing narrative—while remaining attentive to the medium’s history—through thoughtful, accessible writing.
For these reasons, the main section of the magazine is now divided into two parts, “Words” and “Pictures.” In each issue, these two will cohere around an inquiry into a field or topic: the “Words” section will feature the longer, more substantial textual contributions, as well as interviews; in “Pictures” the emphasis will be on individual artists’ projects and photo series, generally introduced by short statements. A2/SW/HK, our new art directors, have re-envisioned the magazine to capitalize on how this print publication can continue to assert itself as an object, through its tactile presence, dynamic typography, and high-quality reproductions—all housed in an elegant design geared toward both reading and viewing.
We thought it fitting to organize our relaunch issue around a broad set of concerns for photography today. To get started, we called upon a group of thinkers, curators, and photographers to consider language from Aperture’s original 1952 mission statement proposing that the magazine should serve as a platform to “comment on what goes on” and to “descry the new potentials” of the medium. Our title, Hello, Photography, is a reversal of Daido Moriyama’s 1972 title Bye Bye Photography, his book of blown-out, fractured photographs that seemed designed to thwart easy comprehension—an acknowledgment that the medium was shedding its skin, becoming something else. Today, it’s a truism to talk of photography being in flux. The definition of photography, always multivalent, charting a promiscuous course across disciplines and contexts, feels especially slippery now, and this has caused much recent consternation and reevaluation. This installment of the magazine does not seek to replicate such inquiries, but rather to begin with the premise that all bets are on for the medium.
In his essay on contemporary scholarship, photography historian Robin Kelsey notes that the central concern for the medium today may be the fact that it occupies two homes: a tangible, material world of objects and prints, and a digital world of files and servers. The conflicting characteristics between the two can be felt across the photographic contexts represented here, as contributors to the “Words” section grapple with a host of ideas: the mandates and expectations for institutions dedicated to photography; how we might rethink photography education to better reflect our image culture (and how this image culture, which fluidly flattens and divorces images from context, potentially alters their evidentiary capacity); the interplay, as well as the familiar conflicts, of digital and analog; how to establish a taxonomy of vernacular photography when image output has grown too voluminous to parse; and how it might be productive, from our current vantage shaped by technological innovation and antic image traffic, to revisit older ideas—like that of artistic freedom—which take on new shadings in the current terrain.
In “Pictures,” opening with a selection from Christopher Williams’s new series based on a manual for an East German camera (also featured on this issue’s cover), it is primarily the photographers who, through their own work, make the arguments. Williams’s images of hands manipulating an analog apparatus lead into a series of portfolios that address a diversity of topics, such as our media-saturated society, the medium’s history and mechanics, photography’s indexical relationship to the world, as well as new modes for producing documentary work.
Like Hello, Photography, future issues of Aperture will be organized around specific inquiries: we will engage with photography as an art form, as a social phenomenon, and as an elastic lexicon for creating and shaping ideas. Hence our new tagline: “Speaking the language of photography.” Some issues will be guest-edited; others will be produced offsite, through the prism of a specific city or institution. The two main sections will carry the principal investigation, whereas the front and back will feature a series of rotating columns, including “Studio Visit,” “Collectors,” “Redux,” “Dispatches,” “What Matters Now?” and our new closing page, “Object Lessons.” While we are required, for the first time in a decade, to raise the subscription and newsstand prices of the print edition, all of Aperture’s content is now accessible in the digital version of the magazine at a new, lower price. Print subscriptions will include access to the digital edition as well as our semiannual publication, The PhotoBook Review. The magazine will also be more closely integrated with Aperture Foundation’s live and online programming: the debates, ideas, and work published in print will be explored through events at the Aperture Gallery and other venues, as well as on our website.
For sixty years now, Aperture has charted the concepts and changes shaping photography’s evolving narrative. Minor White, the magazine’s founding editor, noted in an editorial of 1953, a moment when the photography world was much smaller: “Photography seems to be reevaluating itself these days—probably preparatory to taking off in a new direction.” The magazine has always had as its mandate a goal of serious disquisition on the state of the medium. The following pages introduce a range of vital questions with a view to animating—and reanimating—key ideas on photography. This lies at the heart of Aperture’s purpose as it moves in a new direction, the better to respond to the medium’s many new directions.
— The Editors
February 14, 2013
Aperture’s 2013 Traveling Exhibitions
Aperture Gallery in New York City hosted the reGeneration 2 exhibition in early 2011. The show is scheduled to open at the Devos Art Museum in Marquette, Michigan, on February 22.
The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography
Louisiana Museum of Art and Science
January 16–April 14
On Thursday, February 28, the Louisiana Museum of Art and Science will host “Art After Hours: Photography at the Edge.” Louisiana State University assistant professor Kristine Thompson will guide visitors through The Edge of Vision, which was curated by Lyle Rexer, author of The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography (Aperture, 2009) and features abstract imagery in all forms. The Aperture gallery hosted The Edge of Vision exhibition in May 2009.
Chuck Close: A Couple Ways of Doing Something
Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Tampa
February 7–March 31
An exhibition of work by Chuck Close, A Couple Ways of Doing Something features fifteen daguerrotypes of leading contemporary artists, including Andres Serrano and Cindy Sherman. Close’s daguerrotype prints are accompanied by Bob Holman’s witty and beautifully typset poetry.
The Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards
Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York
February 15–March 31
Last year, Paris Photo and Aperture Foundation hosted the inaugural Paris Photo—Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. This accompanying exhibition features the thirty outstanding books shortlisted for the First Photobook and Photobook of the Year prizes. Look out for City Diary (Volumes 1–3) by Anders Peterson (Steidl, 2012), which was selected as PhotoBook of the Year, and Concresco by David Galjaard (self-published, 2012), which won $10,000 in the First PhotoBook category.
reGeneration(2): Tomorrow’s Photographers Today
The DeVos Art Museum, Marquette, Michigan
February 25–April 7
reGeneration(2) will open at the DeVos Art Museum on February 25. The exhibition features a collection of work from the world’s best up-and-coming photographers. The Aperture Gallery showcased this exhibition January 2011.
Paul Strand: The Mexican Portfolio
Louisville Art Center, Louisville, Kentucky
March 15–May 12
The Mexican Portfolio, originally titled “Photographs of Mexico,” features twenty of Strand’s photogravure images depicting the people, landscapes, architecture, and objects he encountered in Mexico between 1932–1933. The photos are drawn from the collection of the Paul Strand Archive of Aperture Foundation.
The New York Times Magazine Photographs
Sala Gasco Art Contemporaneo, Santiago, Chile
April 15–May 31
The New York Times Magazine Photographs exhibition, which consists of 126 works by thirty-five artists, celebrates eclecticism in magazine photography—from photojournalism to fashion photography and portraiture. Curated by New York Times Magazine photo editor Kathy Ryan, the show features pieces by Lynsey Addario, Gregory Crewdson, Mitch Epstein, Nan Goldin, Annie Liebovitz, Mary Ellen Mark, Steve McCurry, and more.
The Edge of Vision
$49.95
A Couple of Ways of Doing Something
$50.00
Paul Strand in Mexico Limited-Edition Box Set
$2,000.00
reGeneration 2
$39.95
The New York Times Magazine Photographs
$75.00
Paul Strand in Mexico
$75.00
February 12, 2013
Aperture at New York Fashion Week
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Aperture magazine visited the tents at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week for last Saturday’s presentation of the Rafael Cennamo Fall 2013 collection. Presentation attendees went home with special Aperture at Sixty totes containing advance issues of Aperture magazine #210.
Still waiting on yours? Stay tuned. There are just two weeks until Aperture magazine’s Spring 2013 issue, “Hello, Photography,” hits newsstands and reaches current subscribers.
Not yet an Aperture magazine subscriber? Subscribe today.
All images courtesy Rodin Hamidi.
JH Engström Photography Workshop
For the past fifteen years, JH Engström, an internationally acclaimed photographer, has held workshops regularly all over Europe and has lectured at the International Center of Photography in New York. He considers the workshop a critical part of his development as a photographer and artist, and in that spirit has launched Atelier Smedsby, a year-long web-based workshop coordinated by Engström and photographer Margot Wallard.
Through the Atelier, Engström strives to “spread out the possibilities of contact between the participants and [himself],” since time, he believes, is such an important tool in the photographic process. During the course of the year, attendees will critique the work of their colleagues in one-month intervals, incorporating three individual/group meetings in Paris and monthly reports on the progress of their works via e-mail or Skype. During these monthly reports, they will be able to ask questions, demonstrate the evolution of their work, receive evaluation and feedback, and thus move forward in the accomplishment of their personal projects.
The application deadline for the 2013/2014 session is March 30, 2013. Application information can be found on www.atelier-smedsby.com.
Aperture plans to publish Sketch of Paris: Photographs by JH Engström in Fall 2013.
CDG/ JHE #41, 2006$1,800.00
Trying to Dance Portfolio, 2004$2,500.00
February 8, 2013
Alternative Realities at El Museo del Barrio
Miguel Rio Branco, Feather and Dog, 1983. © Miguel Rio Branco. Courtesy of El Museo del Barrio.
Photographic mediums conventionally assert the notion of reality and accuracy to viewers, but the works included in superreal: alternative realities in photography and video, an exhibition of photography and video that opened at El Museo del Barrio this past week, investigate the many layers that surround our traditional sense of the real. superreal presents photo- and video-based works from 1980 to the present that explore the role of photographic mediums in presenting reality. This exploration manifests through the artists’ creations of alternative realities, ones where the worlds of landscapes, human figures, architecture, objects, and natural phenomena are emphasized or subverted, revealed or obscured.
superreal features 150 works by artists such as Adál, Tania Bruguera, Vik Muniz, Miguel Rio Branco, Betsabee Romero, and Andres Serrano. These artists utilize their distinct working methods and viewpoints to challenge preconceived reality and engage with their environments in both surreal and super-real ways that also subvert narrative forms.
superreal: alternative realities in photography and video is on view at El Museo del Barrio in New York City through May 19.
Reflex$39.95
February 7, 2013
On Process and Color
A conversation with curator Jordan Tate and artist Sherwin Rivera Tibayan
Color Shift, a group show curated by Jordan Tate, is on view at Mixed Greens in New York until February 9. The exhibition explores and revisits modernism’s reductive approach to medium, material, and color and its influence on contemporary art production. It includes new work by the artists Arabella Campbell, Wyatt Niehaus, Zachary Dean Norman, Rick Silva, Kate Steciw, Sherwin Rivera Tibayan, and Alex Walp.
Color Shift group exhibition at Mixed Greens. Image courtesy of Mixed Greens.
Paula Kupfer: Jordan, did Mixed Greens contact you with a proposal, or had you been thinking about these ideas already?
Jordan Tate: Courtney Strimple and Heather Dacry Bhandari contacted me and asked if I had an interest in curating an exhibition for Mixed Greens to start off the year. After giving it some thought, I proposed the idea of Color Shift to the gallery directors and we got started.
PK: Where did the inspiration come from?
JT: I believe that modernist methodologies (distinctly different from modernist aesthetics) are being utilized by a growing number of artists. Given the important role that photography played in catalyzing modernism, I find the medium functioning similarly following the popularization of the internet. I also define photography very broadly, and tend to think of it as a mode of inquiry more than an idea that rests on fixing light on a surface—objective reality be damned.
PK: Many of the works in the show involve photography, but most come at the medium in oblique ways. You identified five influential artists—Ellsworth Kelly, Yves Klein, Robert Irwin, Ay-O, Barnett Newman—whose legacy you sought to explore through this exhibition. How did you arrive at this list? What other criteria did you use? Were these five the basis for your participating artists’ responses, or was the curatorial process more of an open conversation?
JT: As I mentioned earlier, I view photography as a philosophical exchange more than a medium, and in that manner, I think it is nearly impossible to find an art object that isn’t in some way governed by our relationship to photography and image-making. I wanted the artists to try to approach this Herculean task from a place of seeming simplicity. The biggest ideas are born out of the simplest questions.
I chose artists whose work I trusted to be good and relevant, people who were aesthetically, historically, or methodologically concerned with the theme of the exhibition and capable of addressing it in a sophisticated yet accessible way. I gave the artists virtually no prompting other than the press release. Sherwin, does that seem accurate?
Sherwin Rivera Tibayan: Right, I remember receiving the email from Jordan and understanding the exhibition proposal as an introduction and an opportunity to continue working along the lines I had, over the past year, been traveling. In terms of the other artists in the show, I was happy to see a mix of new artists whose works I could engage with and others I had been following for some time.
PK: Sherwin, your two pieces were created on site, at night, in the gallery?
SRT: Two nights even!
JT: I think he was locked in, too!
Color Shift group exhibition at Mixed Greens. Image courtesy of Mixed Greens.
SRT: To be honest, the nights went pretty quickly because the labor involved required so much of attention. The folks at Mixed Greens were very generous and provided me with all the materials I requested, showed me where the fridge was, and let me connect my phone to the gallery sound system so I could listen to some music. Because I was constructing this work with blue tape on sheets of drywall, all that was remained was making sure I kept my taped lines straight and tight. This was important for me because I wanted the viewer to have at least two experiences with the work. From a distance, I needed it to look like the uninterrupted blue of a Klein monochrome, while up close, where the individual lines of tape could be discerned, I wanted a depiction of the space that housed such a work. In the end, each piece required around fifteen hours of taping.
PK: Sherwin, your projects negotiate art and photo history. How did the requirements of site-specificty creation add to these two works?
SRT: I tried to think of this project as operating between different types of site-specificity, both material and immaterial. For a few years I’ve been interested in the ways we now come to encounter historical works of art and photography. Like many people who don’t live in a major art center, my most frequent encounters with works of art are with documentary images—especially online images—in forms like the installation-view photograph. Because of this show’s themes and the fact that the exhibition would be on view in New York, I wanted to make pieces that were also informed by an institutional space within the city, about a work of art I’ve never seen in person. In this case, I began by using tourist snapshots of Yves Klein’s Blue Monochrome (1961) at the Museum of Modern Art that I found on sites like Flickr. (The work, according to MoMA’s website, is not currently on view.) Lastly, since I was working with six-by-four-foot pieces of drywall (the dimensions of Klein’s piece) and blue painter’s tape that is often used during exhibition installations, it felt appropriate to construct the objects inside the gallery during the week of the install.
Above: Color Shift group exhibition at Mixed Greens. Below: Sherwin Rivera Tibayan, Installation View (MOMA, Blue Monochrome, 1961, Yves Klein), 2012. Images courtesy of Mixed Greens.
PK: Why tape? Can you describe your process in arriving at the two final Installation View pieces?
SRT: I’ve always associated blue painter’s tape with installation and exhibition preparation. In that sense, it was an easy fit. But more importantly, I loved how a roll of tape can encompass both digital and analog metaphors. Left alone, it showcases a kind of continuous and unbroken nature. But in order to use tape, to get that form to function, we have to cut it up into discrete units. The transformation that the tape undergoes seemed to fit rather well with my interest in the digital experience of actual works.
In the months leading up to the exhibition I began collecting photographs online depicting the site, at MoMA, where the piece was on display. I wanted to deal with the multiplicity of images and angles available to depict this one object and selected two that I felt best introduced this collection. Ultimately, I see this as a series of between seven and ten similarly sized tape constructions.
PK: This was a commission-based exhibition. Jordan, how did that change the process for you as a curator? Were you surprised by the outcome?
JT: It was risky given the time frame, but I chose people who I thought would rise to the challenge. It was still very difficult to have that little curatorial agency—a little terrifying, even. It was my first attempt at a lack of curatorial control and that was tough. I saw most of the works about forty-eight hours before to the opening, though some of the artists sent me JPEGs prior to the installation. That said, installing the show gave me great latitude in creating conversations between works and helping the overall flow.
As for your second question, I don’t know if I was necessarily surprised, as most artists were already considering these ideas in their studios. I don’t think it was a stretch for any of them—but I was very curious about what I would end up with. I guess I thought that the connections between these artists were perhaps not readily apparent, though they were certainly prevalent to me. I also wanted to focus on artists from a broader geographic spectrum.
SRT: I think a lot of people enjoyed the geographic breadth of the roster.
PK: Was this in response to other curators’ New York–centric approach?
JT: Yes. That said, I am not making any judgments of the geographic diversity of exhibitions in this city. I feel there is a lack of diverse representation in the majority of shows—but, to be fair, there are a disproportionately large number of artists in New York. I thought this would be an opportunity for showcasing work from other regions, too.
PK: I want to return for a moment to the element of surprise. For instance, I was surprised to see Kate Steciw, who is known for her digitally manipulated photographs, presenting works in oil. Do you think the artists viewed this as an opportunity to explore materials or themes outside the normal bounds of their practice?
JT: I found that all of the artists made work that was true to their aesthetics and concerns in some fashion. When I say I wasn’t surprised by any of the works, it’s because I didn’t have rigid expectations of how they would approach the exhibition. I expected them to do something great—and they did!
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Paula Kupfer is the assistant editor for Aperture magazine.
A2/SW/HK: On Press
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All images courtesy of A2/SW/HK.
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