Robbert Flick / SV 023B North of Kankakee, Illinois, 1980, SV 009 Venice Beach 180 degrees, 1980, SV 014 Manhattan Beach from Vista, 1980, SV003/80, 1980
DENK gallery is pleased to present Framing Time, a group exhibition featuring photography-based works by ten contemporary artists with formative or working connections to Los Angeles. Each artist approaches the concept of temporality with unique and evocative applications of a medium that inherently lends itself to the capture of time. With projects ranging from the poetic and conceptual to the obsessively documentary, Framing Time presents investigations of its passing and ephemera from its arrest. In place of the static snapshot, or frozen ‘Kodak moment’ – an idea popularized by the company’s iconic 60’s ad campaign – these artists offer complex and layered sequences of photographic imagery, redistributing the visual narrative of the medium somewhere between the cinematic and the experiential.
Dinh Q Lê / View From Above (Double Standing Portrait), 2017
Augusta Wood / HF, JM, RL, Posy (1983, 1985, 1996, 2002, 2008), 2010
Augusta Wood / Mostra Di, Helen holding a carton of milk (1993, 1994, 1999, 2003, 2003, 2008), 2011
Framing Time features critical works by Uta Barth, Stephen Berens, John Divola, Robbert Flick, Tim Hawkinson, Dinh Q Lê, George Legrady, Sharon Lockhart, Ed Ruscha, and Augusta Wood, all of whom have pushed the boundaries of photography in experimental ways. Shared among the examples from this group of artists is an interest in the medium’s living dimensions, and its potential, to capture movement, subtle shifts in environment, incremental changes in observed or staged subjects, and even its sculptural or plastic possibilities through process-oriented interventions.
George Legrady / Coliseum, 2015
Uta Barth / Deep Blue Day (12.5), 2012
John Divola, R01F30, 1996 – 1997 / R01F07, 1996 – 1997
Stephen Berens, Through thick fog and mist & The air was so dusty, 2017 / Gentle winds & The moon, watery and pale is up, 2018
Whether in pursuit of the primary moment, a lost history, a collective view, or an impression of time and place, these works are similarly in search of the physical traces of dead, transient time. This essential haunting, long the indisputable domain of photography, remains as poignant as ever, especially in an age of digital dissimulation and increasing disembodiment. A medium of longing and evasion, it’s shadowy dimensions are fugitively caught, offering us the vague evidence of our own mortality.
Framing Time
January 12 – February 9, 2019 / Denk Gallery
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