The Light in Cuban Eyes in The New Yorker

The New Yorker
May 18, 2015
By Vince Aletti

This survey of contemporary Cuban photography is timely, but, while nearly all the pictures were made this century, little of it looks new or inventive. Perhaps that's why the most satisfying works are black and white and rooted in the documentary tradition. Arien Chang, José Julián Martí, Jorge Louis Álvarez Pupo, and Pedro Abascal view their countrymen with the sort of penetrating concern that gets below the surface of everyday events, from a cock fight to a game of dominoes; in his portraits of gay men, Alejandro Gonzalez gives the revolution's outcasts a powerful presence.

Susan Rankaitis in Current Exhibitions

Gallery artist Susan Rankaitis is featured in two current museum exhibitions:

One-of-a-kind
Unique Photographic Objects from the Center for Creative Photography
Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography
Phoenix Art Museum
April 11 - October 19, 2015

This exhibition challenges the expectation that photographs are infinitely reproducible multiples. Typically photographs are printed from a negative or digital capture, and can be produced in editions ranging from a few prints to several hundred. However, some photographic processes – including daguerreotypes, tintypes, and Polaroid prints – produce only a single, one-of-a-kind object. In other cases, artists choose to use materials in a way that produces a unique artwork, such as sculpting and collaging with or painting and drawing on photographs. The exhibition will include works from the entire history of the photographic medium, from the 1840s to the present day.  Unique photographs by David Emitt Adams, Pierre Cordier, Betty Hahn, Bill Jay, Chris McCaw, Joyce Neimanas, Susan Rankaitis and Andy Warhol will be included.

Lens Work: Celebrating LACMA's Experimental Photography at 50
Hammer Building, Level 3
February 7 - July 4, 2015

Photography was founded on and developed as a result of experimentation: it is a technology-based practice rife with inherent uncertainties, despite its reputation for reliably documenting reality. This installation celebrates the curatorial drive informing over 50 years of collecting at LACMA, which embraces experimentation in photography.
From works by the medium’s earliest practitioners to those by contemporary artists, LACMA’s collection is rich in innovative examples of what is often referred to as “the magic of photography.” As lenses evolve and choices of final output increase, photographic practice will no doubt continue to inspire new ways of perceiving, seeing, and believing.

Robert Mann Gallery at the AIPAD Photography Show

The AIPAD Photography Show
Park Avenue Armory, New York City
Booth 302
 

Robert Mann Gallery is excited to exhibit at the AIPAD Photography Show from April 16 - 19 at the Park Avenue Armory. We are pleased to present a powerful group of images by contemporary Cuban photographers from our current exhibition The Light in Cuban Eyes, rare works by masters including Masahisa Fukase and Minor White, and standout works by contemporary artists Julie Blackmon, Cig Harvey, and Jeff Brouws. Following our recent announcement of representation of Mike Mandel, we will also be showing a selection of photographs from the artist's noteworthy series Myself: Timed Exposures.

Mary Mattingly and the Bronx Museum in Havana

Wild Noise: Artwork from The Bronx Museum of the Arts and El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
May 21 to August 16, 2015 at El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Gallery artist Mary Mattingly is currently participating in an artist exchange to Havana in cooperation with the Bronx Museum and El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana (MNBA). The museum writes,

The Bronx Museum of the Arts and El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana (MNBA) have announced an unprecedented joint arts initiative that is the culmination of years of planning and collaboration. Wild Noise: Artwork from The Bronx Museum of the Arts and El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes represents the most extensive visual arts exchange between the two countries in more than 50 years, and will include major exhibitions at MNBA and the Bronx Museum; an artist exchange with U.S. artist Mary Mattingly and Cuban artist Humberto Diaz; a teen exchange program; a series of educational and public programs; and the publication of a dual-language publication that will extend the impact of Wild Noise beyond the audiences that participate directly in the initiative.

Continue reading the press release here.

Cig Harvey's "Gardening at Night" in Vogue's Top Photo Books for Spring

Cig Harvey's newest book, Gardening at Night, is one of Vogue's picks for the top photo books released this spring. Following the sold-out success of Harvey's first book, You Look at Me Like An Emergency, Gardening at Night features works from the artist's new series of the same name in an exploration of home, family, nature, and time. The book is published by Schilt Publishing and will be available through the gallery in April.

See the slideshow here.

The Light in Cuban Eyes in PBS Art Beat

Photos: Exhibit allows glimpse at Cuba,
forbidden to Americans for so long
By Victoria Fleischer
March 27, 2015

When Cuban photographer Nelson Ramirez was eight years old, he borrowed his mother’s camera, a twin-lens reflex that requires you to reload film before each shot. Ramirez kept forgetting to reload. When he finally developed the roll of film eight years later, he noticed the negatives had multiple exposures.

“I think those are the first manipulated photography that I did,” Ramirez told Art Beat. This week, the Robert Mann gallery in New York City opened “The Light in Cuban Eyes,” a two-month long exhibit that showcases Ramirez work along with 23 others. The exhibit is an offshoot of a book by the same name, which showcases 50 artists and was published earlier this month.

Continue reading the article here.

The Light in Cuban Eyes on The Leonard Lopate Show

Shining a Light on Cuban Photography
Aired Thursday, March 26th at 1pm

Coinciding with the opening of Robert Mann Gallery's exhibition The Light in Cuban Eyes, Madeleine P. Plonsker—who inspired our exhibition and organized the book of the same name—spoke with Leonard Lopate along with artists Nelson Ramirez and Alejandro Pérez. Listen to the interview below or read more online here.

The Light in Cuban Eyes reviewed in Widewalls

The Cuban art has been marginalized and out of the loop for decades, due to US-Cuban relations. All those years, Cuban artist had opportunities to exhibit and to promote their art mainly in Europe, but the lack of cooperation between the island and its closest neighbor – the US has been causing a serious damage to the Cuban cultural and artistic scene. The situation with Cubans living in the US has been completely different, yet they have always hoped that the isolating wall between these two countries would be demolished. In December, the Obama administration announced tremendous changes regarding US – Cuba relations, with the goal to improve the cooperation between two nations. In this context, Robert Mann Gallery in New York is organizing a group exhibition of contemporary Cuban photography.

Continue reading the article here

Announcing Representation of Mike Mandel

 

Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to announce the representation of Mike Mandel. Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Mandel is heavily influenced by the period of expansion and franchising in the Los Angeles region during the 1960s and ‘70s. His photographic series utilize elements of popular media to communicate themes of alienation, commercialization, and personal identity in an increasingly public world.

In the series People in Cars, the artist captures reactions to the sudden intrusion of his camera into the private space of the car, a defining element of Southern California culture after an era of massive freeway expansion. In the tongue-in-cheek Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards, great photographers of the 20th century appear as exchangeable baseball cards complete with satirical stats and quotations. Evidence, a collaboration with Larry Sultan, marked a pivotal change in the idea of photographic authorship and narrative: using found photos carefully culled from the files of government agencies and corporations, the photographers imparted new meaning solely through context. And wonderfully apropros to our contemporary moment, Mandel’s Myself: Timed Exposures can be seen as the original selfies—endearingly awkward, unpretentiously charismatic, and supremely honest about human interactions in the modern age.

Mike Mandel was born in 1950 in Los Angeles. He received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and currently teaches at the School of the Museum Fine Arts, Boston Studio Program at Tufts University. His work is in permanent collections including those of the Museum of Modern Art; The Center for Creative Photography; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His published art books include Myself: Timed Exposures, Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards, Evidence (co-authored with Larry Sultan), Making Good Time, and State of Ata, (co-authored with Chantal Zakari), among others. He lives in Watertown, Massachusetts.