YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY
535 West 22nd Street 3rd floor
NY 10011
New York, NY
New York
North America
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W: www.yanceyrichardson.com
Bertien van Manen Image � the artist, courtesy Yancey Richardson Gallery
January 5 – February 11, 2012 Opening Reception and Book Signing: Thursday, January 5, 6-8pm
The Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present Let’s sit down before we go , an exhibition of works by Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen. Van Manen’s work is a meditation on human existence, revealing the truth of particular lives. Selected from her travels through Uzbekistan, Siberia, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Moscow and Tartarstan since 1990, van Manen’s photographs are characterized by the intimacy she achieves with her subjects, with whom she spent countless hours sitting at their tables, lodging in their homes, immersed in their reality.
Van Manen provides a window into Russian lives following years of struggle under the Communist regime. As critic Ryszard Kapu œciñ ski notes in his introduction to van Manen’s 1995 book, A hundred summers, a hundred winters, the artist’s lens penetrates the “most inaccessible of places—the homes of ordinary people—in order to show us how millions of Russians live and sleep, what they eat, what they look like in their everyday life, in their flats, at their tables, in their beds.” In the case of the former Soviet empire, people were conditioned to be fearful and suspicious, long forbidden to exhibit whom they really were to the rest of the world. By contrast, Van Manen celebrates the country’s richness and humanity, especially that of its youth, capturing her subjects at leisure with family and friends, snow skiing in bathing suits, donning wedding dresses, swimming in Siberia and cutting hair in an emerald green meadow.
Kapu œciñ ski writes, “Through her excellent photographs and her inquiring and humanistic temperament, and with powerful artistic expression, Bertien van Manen shows what historians, writers, sociologists and political scientists argue, that there are at least two Russias. There is the official, imperial, external Russia, known to us from newspaper headlines, and the one within, the hidden, poor Russia of the anonymous, ordinary people of whose existence Bertien van Manen’s moving and revealing [work] tells.”
Born in 1942 in The Hague, The Netherlands, van Manen lives and works in Amsterdam. Her most recent monograph, Let’s sit down before we go, was released in 2011. She has released three previous monographs: A hundred summers, a hundred winters (1994), East Wind West Wind (2004), and Give Me Your Image (2005), selections of which featured in New Photography 2005 at the Museum of Modern Art. Van Manen’s work is held in the permanent collections of several major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Stedelijk Museum. Her work has been exhibited internationally at museums such as the Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Reina Sofia, and the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo. The series Let’s sit down before we go will be presented in its entirety at FOAM Photography Museum, Amsterdam in March 2012.
Project Gallery:
Jitka Hanzlová HERE January 5 – February 11, 2012 Opening Reception Thursday, January 5, 6-8pm
The Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present HERE , a project gallery exhibition of works by Czech photographer Jitka Hanzlová, marking the debut exhibition of the artist’s work at the gallery. The decade-long series documents the artist’s experience of acclimation to her new home in the Ruhr region of northwest Germany. Formed by a conglomeration of industrial centers, including Hanzlová’s adopted town of Essen, the landscape of the Ruhr region is in sharp contrast to the pristine forests of her childhood.
The residual sense of foreignness to the landscape, language and people is at the heart of the series. As Hanzlová explains, “Otherness is a challenge. It keeps you alert and sharpens your senses.” The images reflect this visual acuity, presenting curious landscapes clearly shaped by human intervention yet resplendent in their poetic sensibility. “The feel of a place is very important to my work, especially the light,” says the artist. Hanzlová’s expert treatment of light and attention to detail lend a sense of the transformative in these landscapes, as seen through the eyes of a poet.
Hanzlová has produced several other bodies of work since beginning HERE in 1998, including: Cotton Rose, a series of portraits in Japan, published as a monograph by Steidl; Leonardo, a series of Renaissance inspired portraits; Female, a portrait series of women the artist encountered on the streets of Europe and America; and Forest , a quiet yet powerful exploration of the forest near the Czech village where she grew up. Void of any trace of civilization, the Forest images possess an out-of-time, enchanted quality. As critic John Berger writes in the introduction to Steidl’s monograph of Forest, “the longer one looks at Jitka Hanzlová’s pictures of her forest, the clearer it becomes that escape from the prison of modern time is possible.”
Born in Czechoslovakia in 1958, Jitka Hanzlová has lived in Germany since 1983. She has had solo exhibitions in several international museums, including the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, the Fotomuseum, Winterthur, and the Stedelijk, Amsterdam. She is the winner of the 2007 BMW Prize at Paris Photo, the 2003 Grand Prix Award, Arles, and was shortlisted for the 2001 Citibank Photography Prize. Her work is held in the permanent collections of several major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Stedelijk Museum, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, among many others.
KUNST HALLE SANKT GALLEN presents David Renggli - Scaramouche
17 August - 27 October 2013
David Renggli - in some respects a prodigy of the Swiss art scene - has repeatedly aroused the curiosity of the public for more than ten years thanks to a unique mixture of themes and forms, of spectacle, humour and poetry.
The Showroom, London presents Ricardo Basbaum: re-projecting (london)
12 July - 17 August 2013
The Showroom is delighted to present re-projecting (london), a major new commission by Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum, and the first significant presentation of his internationally renowned artwork in the UK.
