For immediate release

A.I.R.

Making and Taking: “Pictures” Reconsidered

A.I.R. Gallery’s 11th Biennial Exhibition

December 4, 2014 – January 3, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 4, 6-9pm Brooklyn, NY – November 2014

Making and Taking: “Pictures” Reconsidered, curated by Nancy Princenthal, is an exhibition of thirty–three artists of diverse backgrounds, from the United States, Canada, and Israel. The exhibition will be on view from December 4, 2014 – January 3, 2015, with an opening reception on December 4th from 6-9pm.

Nancy Princenthal writes: This biennial results from an open invitation to female artists “investigating the intersection of hand produced and photographic pictures.” To dig around a little in the show’s premise, and title: I was thinking, in part, of the old chestnut, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” It is a pronouncement made by Ansel Adams, he of the transcendent Western landscapes, seemingly given to him direct by the gods of sunlight, shadow and wind. But like landscape itself, Adams’s images, he tell us, weren’t there until seen and framed—and then shot, printed, and, we now know, manipulated. We know, too, that manipulated photographs go back to the birth of photography; soft-edged, hazily lit and symbolically rich Pictorialist images of the late nineteenth century were not the first to demonstrate that painterly effects could be achieved with a camera, light-sensitive emulsion, and various darkroom maneuvers. It is a tradition rich with women photographers, from Julia Margaret Cameron and Gertrude Käsebier to Sally Mann.

I found, in (the artwork selected), a widely shared pleasure in mixing the digital and the analog and in violating technical protocols; in reversals, inversions, and shadows, and the representation of things that are not quite there. Photography, for these artists, is often a tool of introspection and of memory; painting a way of gorging on photography, of chewing it up and spitting it back out.

Artists: Temme Barkin – Leeds, Kristi Beisecker, Susan Carnahan, Sophia Chai, Melissa Cowper-Smith, Erin Kyle Danna, Torrie Fox, Margery Freeman Appelbaum, Rose Frisenda, Kristin Furbeck, Karine Giboulo, Shohreh GolAzad, Susan Hambleton, Jasmine Higbee, Monica Hopenwasser, Donna Anderson Kam, Kharis Kennedy, Jessica Maffia, Erika Mahr, Kate McCammon, Ali Miller, Yasaman Moussavi, Josefa Mulaire, Ilona Pachler, Caroline Parks, Rebecca Shavulsky, Amy Swartele, Sarah West, Amanda Wild, Jeanne Wilkinson, Suly Wolff, Greta Young, Mary Zompetti

* Please note the gallery will be closed for the holidays 12/23/14 – 1/1/15

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Nancy Princenthal: Nancy Princenthal is a New York-based critic and former Senior Editor of Art in America, for which she continues to write regularly; other publications to which she has contributed include Artforum, Parkett, the Village Voice, and the New York Times. Her monograph on Hannah Wilke was published by Prestel in 2010; she has also written essays for monographs on Michelle Stuart, Shirin Neshat, Doris Salcedo, Robert Mangold and Alfredo Jaar, among others. She is a co-author of two recent books on leading women artists, including The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium (Prestel, fall 2013). At present Princenthal is writing a book about Agnes Martin. Having taught at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; Princeton University; Yale University, RISD, Montclair State University and elsewhere, she is currently on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts.

For all press inquiries, please contact; JoAnne McFarland, Co-Director
A.I.R. GALLERY | 111 Front Street, #228 | Brooklyn, NY 11201 | www.airgallery.org | (212) 255 6651 | Wed – Sun 12-6pm