In a photograph that recalls Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, a lone figure overlooks Iceland's Gullfoss waterfall. Unlike Friedrich's wanderer, who towers confidently over the scene beneath him, Belgian photographer Maroesjka Lavigne's subject is nearly indiscernible in the landscape, his black clothing almost completely blanketed in snow.
He's not the only person or man-made object made small by nature in Lavigne's series Ísland, on view at Robert Mann Gallery through May 17. A swimmer floating in a turquoise pool is rendered faceless by Lavigne's flash against the surface of the water. A red bus and a red roof are almost entirely veiled in white. Nature, if not humanity's superior, often seems at least its contemporary, a force with which to be reckoned.
But Lavigne's perspective is not so simplistic. Just as often, we are forced to consider humanity's influence on nature. In one photograph, a smattering of pink shrimp lie fetus-like across a clinically white kitchen sink. In another, taken at Reykjavik's Blue Lagoon, the tops of bodies are dots across the landscape, drifting in a cloud of steam rising from the water. Or is that haze from the industrial facility, just visible in the background, spewing clouds of smoke from a set of chimneys?
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Robert Mann Gallery featured as a Must-See Booth in Artinfo
Must-See Booths at the AIPAD Photography Show
The mood was light as the 34th edition of the AIPAD Photography Show opened its doors last night to a buoyant crowd of dealers, collectors, curators, and fans. Photography, a medium that has grown comfortably into its malleable place within the art discussion, certainly attracts a friendly crowd, with dealers popping into each other's booths throughout the evening... Portraiture was alive and well, with some fantastic inclusions from Julie Blackmon, at Robert Mann Gallery, of her seemingly stylized vignettes of nuclear families, and Song Chao, at M97, whose shots of mine workers read as political statements that are visually reminiscent of work by Michael Halsband.
—Julie Baumgardner
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Jennifer Williams at AIPAD in The New York Times
Origins Story, Through a Modern Lens
Experimental Strategies at Aipad's Photography Show
The photography world has been ruled in recent years by a fascination with abstraction and experimental processes and techniques. You see this everywhere in the current Association of International Photography Art Dealers show at the Park Avenue Armory. Even Hans P. Kraus Jr., who deals in photographic old masters, is showing—alongside vintage prints by Charles Marville, now featured in a show at the Metropolitan Museum, and Eugène Atget—some 19th-century pencil drawings by John Herschel, an important contributor to early photography...
...Other works that extend the medium in interesting directions include Jennifer Williams's small, sculptural collages made with photographs, at Robert Mann; John Wood's collages and assemblages at Bruce Silverstein; and Wynn Bullock's "Color Light Abstractions" from the '60s at Rick Webster. Although there is plenty of straight photography here, including historical photojournalism at Daniel Blau, it's the drive toward process, abstraction and experimentation that makes this fair feel particularly relevant.
—Martha Schwendener
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Maroesjka Lavigne in Interview Magazine
Maroesjka Lavigne, Once on this Island
"When you take a picture in a beautiful place, you have to realize that nature isn't the background for your photograph," says 24-year-old Belgian photographer Maroesjka Lavigne. "Rather, you are its prop. The only thing added to the scene, after all, is you."
During a four-month excursion to Iceland that began with an internship at The Reykjavik Grapevine, Lavigne became enamored of the country's stark scenery and how its people dealt with the challenges of going about daily life in an environment reigned by vast, inescapable nature. Steering away from typical depictions of Iceland's great mountainscapes and volcanoes, her work seeks instead to deconstruct the auras of intimidation surrounding these overwhelming forms, uncovering what makes Iceland a home to those who live there. The photographs carry a sense of familiarity and nostalgia for Reykjavik and its nearby towns that is marked by an uncanny awareness of our limited time on earth, through side-by-side portrayals of human life and the more lasting, terrestrial features. For Lavigne, nature is unconquerable, and everywhere: a small figure peers contemplatively over a bridge, allowing the falling snow to envelop his image in white, while a suburban street sleeps trustingly beneath an ominous, rust-colored sky. In "Ísland," her first solo show opening at Robert Mann Gallery this Thursday, April 3, Lavigne presents the rare findings of her travels in "moments when color, light and subject merge into the perfect image."
Read the full interview here.
Chip Hooper: Surf reviewed in April 2014 issue of ArtNews
Chip Hooper's eight large-scale photographs of the ocean were assembled here under the title "Surf". These rather kinetic images revealed water caught in motion while also suggesting how quickly our visual metaphors for water can change with painterly shadow plays and expressive gestural effects. Hooper has long drawn inspiration from the sea; his series of photographs capturing the coasts of California and New Zealand take strong visual cues from the landscape photography of Ansel Adams. But in this show, Hooper's documentary impulse went deeper, as seen in extreme close-ups taken over the last ten years that focus on the nature of water in ways that can only be expressed by the camera.
In Surf #1176 (2003), the sea assumes a striated texture, as vertical ripples interspersed with wiry stitches of spray spreads across the surface. Dramatic works, such as this one, were tempered by the presence of a suite of three photographs of feathery, amorphous waters, in white and pale grays that almost appeared to be sketched in charcoal. Though these cloudy images may be less striking visually, they served to make the more charged photos, with their sharp contrasts, that much more pronounced.
Surf #1082 (2003) captures a moment of high drama in a sea of waves: by isolating an instance of water threatening to crash in on itself, Hooper calls attention to water's powerful but ephemeral forms with a sculpture's eye. By contrast, Surf #2154 (2012) stood out: in this photo, the foamy surface is not just an element of the water but a detail of the image itself. Hooper's work is less aligned with that of Adams than with the impulses of the Abstract Expressionists whose work emphasizes pattern and mood.
—Ali Pechman
Wijnanda Deroo: Rijksmuseum featured in Art in America
There's something intangibly eerie about empty museums; when the spaces are under construction (torn-up floors, sculptures draped with cloths, errant ladders) it's even more unsettling. For the last 10 years, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum has been under construction (it reopened last spring). During that time period, Dutch photographer Wijnanda Deroo visited the space several times a year, documenting the demolition and renovation of the museum's interior spaces in rich chromogenic prints. Especially stirring are her shots of diffusely lit empty walls, hallways and doorways that look like color field paintings.
Read the feature online here.
Mary Mattingly in the February issue of Art in America
Art for the Anthropocene Era
By Eleanor Heartney
News from the ecological front has been alarming of late. There was September's report from UN scientists on the acceleration of climate change and the near certainty that these developments are man-made. Then there was the impending arrival of Fukushima radiation on the West Coast, accompanied by half-hearted assurances that "most" of the radiation would be diluted to levels safe for human contact. These reports arrived as New York City prepared to commemorate the first anniversary of the devastating landfall of Superstorm Sandy, reviving memories of other recent damaging "natural" disasters, among them hurricanes Katrina, Wilma and Irene...
...Mary Mattingly looks beyond the kind of immediate problems addressed by [Lillian Ball and Mel Chin] toward what she refers to as the posthuman future, reflecting her conviction that humanity will survive only if we reduce our footprint on Earth. Over the last 13 years she has been engaged in a number of projects that explore the possibility of self-sustaining environments. Her "Wearable Homes" are garments designed to keep the wearer comfortable no matter what the temperature. The 2009 "Waterpod Project," a collaboration with numerous people, was an amphibious home built atop a 30-by-100-foot barge—complete with living quarters, a greenhouse, a windmill and a chicken coop-on which she, three crew members and various guests lived for five months.
Read the complete article online here.
Wijnanda Deroo selected by PDN for “Photo of the Day”
Photo District News
Night (and Day) at the Museum
Ever dreamed of prowling through an art museum when no one else is there? Photographer Wijnanda Deroo was able to explore the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam repeatedly during the years it was closed for extensive renovations, from 2004 until it reopened in April 2013. Built in 1856, the museum, home to "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt and "The Milkmaid" by Vermeer, had undergone many additions in the past. The goal of the renovation was modernize its facilities and restore its floor plan to its architect's original design. Deroo returned several times each year, photographing the progress from demolition to reconstruction. Her images from the project, showing emptied galleries and priceless works of art surrounded by dropcloths, are now on view at Robert Mann Gallery in New York City through March 29. An opening reception will take place February 20.
Throughout her career, Deroo has traveled around the world, photographing interiors. As the gallery says in a statement, "Her images, devoid of people yet full of the vestiges of their presence, are at once intimate and haunting."
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Announcing representation of Maroesjka Lavigne
Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to announce the representation of Maroesjka Lavigne.
Lavigne, whose work marries a graphic aesthetic with a drive for honesty in representing people and place, is a young Belgian photographer who lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. After graduating with a Masters in Photography from Ghent University in 2012, the artist spent four months driving alone across Iceland to create her Ísland series, which was selected by FOAM Magazine as a finalist in the prestigious FOAM Talent Call. The series also won a LensCulture New & Emerging Photographers Grand Prize, and was shown at the 2012 Photo Academy Awards and the Unseen Photo Fair in the Netherlands, as well as the 44 Gallery in Bruges, Belgium.
Maroesjka Lavigne: Ísland will open on April 3, 2014.
Mary Mattingly Film in Art21's New York Close Up
What's the latest trend in New York City real estate? Over the course of the summer and fall of 2013, artist Mary Mattingly constructs and occupies Triple Island (2013), an outdoor sculpture overlooking the East River. Situated in the newly developed Pier 42 public park—a waterfront area flooded by Hurricane Sandy in 2012—the sculpture rests on buoyant 55 gallon drums, which allow it to float in the event of rising sea levels. Mattingly and friends build Triple Island out of a mix of recycled, donated, and custom-made materials.
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