October 26-December 8, 2012 Reception: October 26, 5 - 8PM
Kavi Gupta CHICAGO 835 W. Washington Blvd Chicago, IL 60607
Kavi Gupta CHICAGO is proud to present its third solo exhibition with LA photographer Melanie Schiff. Comprised of 13 of the artist's most recent photographs, the exhibition takes its name from the town where the artist lives on the periphery of Los Angeles. Like much of Schiff's previous work, "Sun Land" cobbles together discrete event to form an enigmatic environment, an imagined landscape that eludes navigation and only gradually imparts each work's depth and complexity.
In “Sun Land”, there are two key threads in dialogue. Works like "Handball Double" (all works 2012) and "Glass House“ provide a legible and historical entry point to the exhibition, underlining Schiff's interest in contemporary photography's unique relationship to site-specificity as it stems from the installation and process artists who came to prominence in the early 70s. Other previous works, like “Halley's Comet (2010) or “Skatepark” (2008), are also representative of this approach where a found and unusual architectural environment is presented as having the aesthetic value of a sculpture-within-a-photograph. Running parallel to this theme, “Sun Land” also reaffirms Schiff's devotion to creating works that through making apparent the technical limits of the camera's exposure and depth of field convey the temporal and intuitive sensibilities that have come to characterize Schiff's work. “Lemon Tree” or “Claybirds” are epitomic of the artist's experiential approach to making photographs as they rely on the camera's inherent inability to record, whether through distance or wavelength, what one can sensorially experience.
Like many of Schiff's previous exhibitions, “Sun Land” reaffirms the artist's process of making photographs that are neither a document of what was photographed nor a formal exposition of photography's constructs. Schiff's inimitable approach gives her work the freedom to not just represent itself but also to underline the collapse between reflection and action that at the crux of making a photograph. The aesthetic result are photographs that are as bewildering as they are beautiful and in their starkness retain a seldom seen clarity.
MELANIE SCHIFF The stars are not wanted now Selected Photographs 2005 - 2012
university galleries Illinois State University College of Fine Arts 110 Center for the Visual Arts Normal, IL 61790
October 27 - December 16, 2012 Reception: October 27, 5 - 7 PM Discussion: October 27, 4 PM with Melanie Schiff and curator Kendra Paitz
The stars are not wanted now is the largest and most comprehensive presentation of Melanie Schiff's photographs to date. Spanning the years 2005 through 2012, and bracketing the period of Schiff’s move from Chicago to Los Angeles in 2008, the exhibition illuminates ongoing concerns in the artist’s investigations of light, atmosphere, place and landscape. “The stars are not wanted now” is taken from a line in W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” an oft-recited elegiac poem decreeing the suspension of time, light and communication. The phrase alludes to the imprints of time and memory apparent in Schiff’s solitary meditations. A close reading of the title also suggests Schiff’s poetic engagement with penetrating natural light, the role of natural phenomena in her subject matter, and her transition from incorporating the histories of icons in popular music, or “stars.”
A publication is forthcoming, with an essay by Shamim Momin, a poem by Kristen VanDeventer, and an interview with the artist by exhibition curator Kendra Paitz. The exhibition and publication have been made possible by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
