Cig Harvey Portfolio Review in Photograph Magazine

Portfolio

September/October 2015
Cig Harvey: Gardening at Night
By Jean Dykstra

The small miracles and slow ripening narratives of the domestic sphere have absorbed photographers from Gertrude Käsebier to Sally Mann. It’s a perplexing fact of contemporary art criticism that artists -- female artists, in particular -- should have to defend that terrain as the subject of their creative practice, but a recent New York Times piece asked: “Why Can’t Great Artists be Mothers?” Cig Harvey rejects the premise. Harvey’s fanciful, dreamlike photographs are rooted in the natural world, in fantasy, and in her experience as a mother.

As Harvey noted in the Times article, “Art, in any form, demands that you turn yourself inside out. You must be obsessed for it to be any good.” But, she added, an artist can be obsessed with her art and with her children, and in her case, those twin obsessions have resulted in a series of quietly beautiful, oped-ended photographs, Gardening at Night. Click here to continue reading.

Ellen Auerbach: Classic Works and Collaborations in The New Yorker

Ellen Auerbach
The New Yorker
August 3, 2015

This valuable addendum to MOMA's current exhibition “From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola” centers on Stern’s partner in the avant-garde photography studio known as ringl + pit. Their Bauhaus-style collaborations, most produced as advertisements in the thirties, are the most arresting images here, juxtaposing models and mannequins, balancing sensuality and restraint. Following a split with Stern, Auerbach’s work became more varied, including portraits of Bertolt Brecht and Willem de Kooning, sensational shots of the dancer Renate Schottelius in midair, and a lovely group of muted color pictures from Mexico—reliquaries, paper roses, an outdoor market—made in collaboration with Eliot Porter. Through Aug. 14.

 

Mary Mattingly for Art in America on Collaboration in Cuba

Push/Pull: A Cultural Exchange in Cuba
By Mary Mattingly
June 26, 2015

For the past eight years, I've focused on co-creating sculptures that address public food, energy production and cyclical water use. These works have almost entirely been created for people in the United States. My most recent sculpture, Pull,  was created through a cultural exchange led by the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana and the Bronx Museum of the Arts as a collective effort alongside the 12th Bienal de La Habana, titled "Between the Idea and the Experience." The artwork consists of two mobile, inhabitable spheres that contain living ecosystems. One of the spheres of Pull currently functions as a temporary autonomous zone in Havana's Parque Central, while the other half is stationed inside the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes as part of exhibition "Wild Noise" (through Aug. 16).   Continue reading the article here.

Jörn Vanhöfen at Kunst- und Kulturstiftung Opelvillen Rüsselsheim

The gallery is pleased to announce that gallery artist, Jörn Vanhöfen, will be featured in a solo show at Kunst- und Kulurstiftung Opelvillen Rüsselsheim in Germany from July 1 through October 25. Loop brings to light the beauty and fear found in the rural and urban landscapes of the world. The exhibition will also feature works from the artist’s other series Aftermath and Disturbia.

 

Ellen Auerbach: Classic Works and Collaborations in The Wall Street Journal

Ellen Auerbach: Classic Works and Collaborations
By William Meyers
June 13, 2015

There are 10 Ringl + Pit prints in Mann’s exhibition of work by Ellen Auerbach (1906-2004). (“Ringl” was Grete Stern’s nickname, “Pit” was Auerbach’s.) Several of the pictures at Mann are also in the current MoMA exhibition, including “Pétrole Hahn” (1931), an ad for a hair preparation; the image features the head of a saccharine, big-eyed mannequin, but the hand holding the bottle is a real human hand. The effect is whimsical, and even a little silly, as well as sophisticated and modern. “Hat and Gloves” (1931), also in both shows, has the gloves placed in front of the dummy head wearing the knit cap in the same relationship they would be on a person.

Read the full article online here. The article appears next to William Meyers' review of the exhibition From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola, on view through October 4th at The Museum of Modern Art.

Paulette Tavormina at Beetles and Huxley

Paulette Tavormina will be showing at Beetles + Huxley Gallery in London from June 30th to July 25th. This will be the first major UK exhibition of her work, and encompass images from both her Natura Morta and Bodegón series. The gallery will be printing a catalogue accompanying the show.

 

New Series by Maroesjka Lavigne

Robert Mann Gallery is excited to announce a new series by Maroesjka Lavigne, Not Seeing a Flower. Shot in Japan, the series was made in cooperation with the Flanders Center in Osaka and will be shown at Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent, Belgium as part of the group exhibition Facing Japan.

The artist writes,

‘Whatever you think, think the opposite’ [is]an expression I heard a lot in and about Japan. This island seemed to be an isolated world far away. Japan has cultivated a certain image in the
western world. Japanese Ukiyo-e pictures influenced this western image. These ‘pictures of the floating world’ of among others Hiroshige and Hokusai caused us to have an unreal image of Japan. In this series I tried to look for the modern beauty Japan has to offer with underlying themes of the old pictures as an inspiration.

Mary Mattingly at the Havana Biennial in The New York Times

Mary Mattingly's interactive installation "Pull" was featured in The New York Times' coverage of the Havana Biennial. The piece is part of the Bronx Museum's exhibition "White Noise" at the Bellas Artes Museum in Havana, Cuba.

The Havana is Running at Full Throttle
By Holland Cotter
May 29, 2015

HAVANA — With the recent political thaw between Cuba and the United States, changes are already lapping the shores of this island nation and may soon be pounding the great sea wall, the Malecón, that stands between Havana, the open water, and a big-spending, big-building, culturally big-footing neighbor to the north.

Everyone knows that major shifts are inevitable once capitalism begins to flood the socialist zone. And a sense of mingled excitement and apprehension is in the air at the 12th Havana Biennial, a diffuse, gradually unfolding, monthlong series of art exhibitions that have been injected into the tissue of this majestic heirloom of a city, adding contemporary warmth to its gorgeously crumbling bones. Continue reading the article here.

Cig Harvey and Julie Blackmon in The New York Times

Why Can't Great Artists Be Mothers?
A group of rising artists rejects the all-or-nothing, children-versus-art
By Jacoba Urist
May 21, 2015
 

The art world is full of enduring stereotypes. There’s the myth of the starving artist. The crazy artist. The hermit artist. And then there’s the childless artist— a woman (yes, she’s usually female) so fervidly dedicated to her craft that there’s no room in her life for motherhood. Indeed, some of the greatest visual artists — Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, and Lee Krasner — had no children. Kids and their constant battery of needs, the argument goes, are incompatible with true creativity. Art is supposed to be an all-consuming enterprise — and now modern parenting is too.

...But there’s a group of rising artists who strongly reject the all-or-nothing, children-versus-art premise. Motherhood, they argue, has increased the complexity of their work and intensified their perspectives, whether or not their subject matter is domestic life. And they believe that the art world is slowly warming to the idea that great artists can also be great mothers.

That doesn’t mean art mythologies don’t apply. These women — like their male or childless counterpart s— immerse themselves in their work to the point of compulsivity. “Art, in any form, demands that you turn yourself inside out. You must be obsessed for it to be any good,” explained Cig Harvey, an artist, based in Rockport, Maine, whose photography has been called “visual fiction” or “magic realism.” Harvey captures nature and ordinary objects — a bird’s nest, sprig of flowers, or woman’s hands — in a dreamlike state. Her new book, Gardening at Night, and current solo Boston show, explore “family, time, and nature through the eyes of a new mother.” Despite the myth, said Harvey, mother to 3-year old Scout, you can be obsessed with two things — art and your child. Missouri photographer, Julie Blackmon is known for edgy parodies of home life — a terrified infant being tossed in the air, (a subject one curator labeled ripe for cliché). She told Art News about balancing passion and motherhood: When your kid tells you that he had to eat croutons for breakfast because he couldn’t find anything else, you know you’ve gone too far.

“Art is mirroring and life became more complicated and richer in my opinion after Scout was born,” explained Harvey. “But the world was also much more terrifying to me.”

Read the full article here.