Actos de Fé #2 by Tatiana Parcero
The Photography Show Presented by AIPAD
April 25 - 28, 2024
Park Avenue Armory
Matt Eich
Jennifer Greenburg
Tatiana Parcero
Constanza Piaggio
We are proud to announce our participation in The Photography Show presented by AIPAD | Association of International Art Dealers. The gallery will present work by a core selection of represented artists, ranging from emerging to mid-career. The curated roster of contemporary artists draws out themes central to our platform.
Exhibiting artists use traditional and hybridized photographic methods and compositions from portraiture to landscape. Their images are imbued with hope and anxiety for an unscripted future. Harmonizing concepts explore identity, mapping, migration, absence, time, change, technology/science. Their juxtaposition underscores contemporary concerns related to the nature of humankind.
This marks the first time the gallery, and nearly all the artists, will present work to the AIPAD audience. Highlights by featured artists follow.
Works by Tatiana Parcero sample from an established 30-year career. Parcero’s oeuvre seeks to understand our connection to the universal through the symbolism of self-portraiture.
Through different lenses Parcero affirms the singularity and plurality of human the experience. She has integrated anatomical drawings, codices, colonial and astrological maps, chemical constructions, and naturalist-style drawings with images of her own body. Through these contexts she explores themes of identity, memory, territory, and time.
Repetition suggests ritual and references physical action in her work. These photographs are documents or artifacts of the private performances required to execute them. Topics of concern range from climate change, dwindling natural resources and migration, to feminism/women’s rights.
In 2016 Parcero’s work was included in a Pacific Standard Time show Revolution & Ritual and appeared in a catalog by the same name. It exhibited at MoMA in 2022, and was the subject of a recent Case Study at MUSAC 2023-24.
Ian van Coller’s Naturalists of the Long Now is an umbrella-title for his broad study on deep time. At its core are a few unique collaborations with scientists who annotate his photographs of their research sites; these works earned van Coller a Guggenheim in 2018. The collaborations employ visual and written language and what today are thought of as disparate fields- art and science- to carry the same message. The title is a nod to both the Victorian era’s embrace of rational thought and a contemporary initiative to build a 10,000 year clock.
Two works to be presented focus on the Rwenzori mountains. In 2019 van Coller accompanied glacier scientist Dr. Carsten Braun to Uganda to photograph the few remaining glaciers. In 1906, the Rwenzori was home to 43 named glaciers distributed over six mountains. By 2005 less than half of these were still present on only three mountains. The Rwenzori Mountains are a source of the Nile River and support varied ecosystems and significant biodiversity.
A tight but expansive set of prints, folio-books, and monographs from Matt Eich’s recent bodies of work reveal the drama and nuance of his evolving practice.
Over the course of 15 years Eich’s longform study of the American condition has evolved in general and personal ways. To follow Eich’s work is to be on the front lines of the moment. The pulse of gritty urgency that accelerated as Eich worked through The Invisible Yoke has gradually yielded a softer tone.
Nationally, mistrust in one another has reached a fever pitch. At home, those closest have become less known. His parents have divorced, and his daughters are coming of age. Eich’s work failed as a warning call before the kettle boiled over. A poetic approach feels a more appropriate strategy to frame collective memory and understand self.
The last volume of the artist's major oeuvre, The Invisible Yoke, Vol. IV: We, The Free is scheduled to publish with Sturm & Drang in spring 2024. Previously published chapters include: Vol. I: Carry Me Ohio; Vol. II: Sin & Salvation in Baptist Town; and Vol. III: The Seven Cities.
Rashod Taylor's photographs root to photographic tradition and claim new ground. Taylor prefers a large format camera and silver prints. His ongoing Little Black Boy series is a collaboration with his son, LJ. The project addresses an under-represented chapter of the United States; the Black American Experience, particularly the relationship between father and son.
The subtleties in Taylor’s work- gestures, objects, framing choices- push our psychology, engagement, and emotion. Tabula rasa gaze, a banana peel, a flag, a divided portrait. The media itself symbolic- at its invention, Black Americans were yet enslaved.
Little Black Boy earned Taylor an Arnold Newman Award and was recently the subject of an article in Black & White Magazine.
In Constructed Portraits Jennifer Greenburg sculpts new representations of female-presenting bodies with photographic material, technology, and the labor of her own hand. Layers of work, selection, intervention, and processing are involved to bring the work from source to pigment print.
In keeping with her practice, Greenburg draws on images from her archive of vintage vernaculars. Part of the multi-step process employed by the artist is interfacing with AI. Hundreds of exchanges follow the initial instruction to “make her more beautiful.” Greenburg is experimenting with what this expanded form of portraiture might reveal about our desires, insecurities, and coded facades. Two works from the series recently acquired by LACMA and slated for inclusion in their contribution to Pacific Standard Time exhibition fall 2024.
Constanza Piaggio's Sharp Memories builds upon previous explorations; the artist tears directly into the surface of analog photographs she makes of nature and fragments of classical paintings. The images she begins with are generally moving or out of focus- these details heighten the tension in the work.
Each disruption embodies a purposeful and impactful maneuver, symbolizing the profound impact of human’s irreversible activity on the planet. Piaggio backs the absent space with color ground to push our contemplation of the permanent shift in the original object, filling but also underscoring the void of what should be there.
Sharp Memories offers a profound reminder: amidst the echoes of destruction, humanity possesses the innate ability to create enduring beauty.
This remnant of the US|MX border references Paul Turounet's Estamos Buscando A (We’re Looking For) project. Initially a site-specific installation, the work has been adapted into an gallery installation (2017 Exhibition at MOCA Tucson), an awarded photo-book, and custom fragments.
Turounet recovered sections of the original 14 miles of primary fencing that was installed in the early 1990’s to divide the US and MX. The fence was constructed of steel army surplus landing mats originally designed for use in the Vietnam War. Two photographic images have been printed on aluminum and magnetized to the wall fragment. They reference the religious iconography of milagro charms and votive paintings found in churches throughout Mexico. The work quietly speaks to the enduring human spirit of the migrant experience.