Opening Wednesday: After Color @ Bose Pascia

from Humble Arts Foundation:


Gradient Tool 5/8, 2008 ©Talia Chetrit

After Color: Curated by amani olu
Artists: Michael Bühler-Rose, Talia Chetrit, Matthew Gamber, Stephen Gill, Adrien Missika, Pushpamala N, Arthur Ou, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen and Michael Vahrenwald

July 8 – August 21, 2009

Press preview: Wednesday, July 8, 4 – 6
Opening reception: Wednesday, July 8, 6 – 9
Panel discussion: Wednesday, July 15, 6 – 8

July 2009 New York – Bose Pacia presents After Color curated by amani olu from July 8 – August 21, 2009. The gallery is located at 508 West 26th Street on the 11th Floor, in the Chelsea district of New York City. The gallery's summer hours are Monday through Friday from 11 to 6 pm. There will be an opening reception on Wednesday, July 8th from 6 to 9 pm. The public is invited.

After Color examines how artists employ conceptual black-and-white photography to strengthen their ideas and how such usage comments on the dominance of large-scale, color photography as seen in the contemporary art world over the last 25 years.

In their work, Michael Bühler-Rose, Talia Chetrit and Noel Rodo-Vankeulen raise questions about medium specificity. Bühler-Rose merges a photogram of the word "edition" with hand painted numbers to ask: At what point does a piece become unique, and at what point is it an editioned multiple? Chetrit reverses the photographic process by using Photoshop's gradient tool to make digitally fabricated images into traditional silver gelatin prints. Situated somewhere between the photographic and filmic, Rodo-Vankeulen's mystical and pulsating animated GIFs breathe life into banal and often stilted images.

In a reference to abstract expressionistic painting, Matthew Gamber's photographs of excessively used chalkboards suggest a kinship between the chalkboard and film photography's recording capabilities. Stephen Gill's typological still lifes of discarded betting slips are formal studies of composition and shape. Using South Indian female archetypes as her subject, Pushpamala N playfully restages the representation of women in photography, whether it is documentary, anthropological or art historical.

Finally, Adrien Missika, Arthur Ou and Michael Vahrenwald redefine landscape photography. Missika transforms the Grand Canyon into small, quarter sized landscapes that mimic floating planets. Ou experiments with the transparency of landscape photography by adding decorative elements created in the darkroom to prove its flatness. Vahrenwald’s photographs of depression therapy light boxes, explore the relationship between landscape and self, or in this case, create a surrogate landscape.

The exhibition has been curated by amani olu, born in Philadelphia (1980). Olu is a private dealer, independent curator and the founder and executive director of Humble Arts Foundation. He recently produced and designed The Collector's Guide to Emerging Art Photography, published by Humble Arts Foundation. He is currently organizing Young Curators, New Ideas II, a curator focused group exhibition that opens in August at P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York. He lives and works in Brooklyn.