Musee Magazine Reviews Murray Fredericks: Vanity

Exhibition Review: Vanity By Murray Fredericks

By Ilana Jael

In Act 3, Scene 2, of Hamlet, William Shakespeare suggests that great art must hold “a mirror up to nature”.  And over 400 years later, photographer Murray Fredericks has more or less taken this suggestion literally to sublime result in his photo series Vanity, on view from now until April 7th at the Robert Mann Gallery in Chelsea. The “nature” in question being reflected upon  is Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, the largest lake and lowest natural point in Frederick’s native Australia. This exhibition is the first chance the photographer has been granted to share his substantial gifts with the United States, and his appearance across the pond with such awe-striking images in tow is certainly a welcome one.

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Holly Andres installation at Museum of Northwest Art

The Homecoming
When photographs tell stories

By Stephen Hunter

A sophisticated artist and professor in Portland, Oregon, Holly Andres remains refreshingly modest about her sudden success. She receives commissions for photo shoots from mainstream publications like the New York Times, Time, and the New Yorker, and her fine art gets attention in Art in America, Art Forum, Glamour, and beyond.

In her current Museum of Northwest Art installation in La Conner, “The Homecoming,” Andres’ still photographs tell three stories: “Summer of the Hornets,” “River Road,” and “The Fall of Spring Hill.”

Andres stages her dramas in woodlands, meadows, dirt roads and carefully prepared interiors. The scenes with professional actors are interspersed with richly colored and textured still lifes, which subtly advance the action. The bright colors and simplicity of her compositions lure the viewer into what soon proves to be a darker, even menacing, subject matter. 

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B & H Podcast: Cig Harvey—Think, See, Make, Listen

What a start to the New Year for the B&H Photography Podcast. We are incredibly fortunate to kick off our year with photographer Cig Harvey and gallerist Caroline Wall, director of the Robert Mann Gallery. In conjunction with her new book, You an Orchestra, You a Bomb, Harvey is currently exhibiting at the Robert Mann Gallery, and we were able to speak with artist and gallerist to discuss the making of her latest portfolio and the collaborative process of exhibition.

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Cig Harvey featured in NY Mag's The Cut

The Beauty of Stillness

By Jane Drinkard

"Photographer Cig Harvey’s photographs allow her viewers to stop for a moment. Serene, mundane, tantalizingly still, and disruptive all at once, her images portray the natural world, families, and the present moment. 'I started looking at this idea of the gasp and awe,' Harvey told the Cut. 'We gasp when something is beautiful, and we gasp when something is terrible. I’m searching for that push/pull in each image.'"

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NYT announces installation by Mary Mattingly at Storm King

A rendering of Mary Mattingly’s proposed work using tropical trees for “Indicators: Artists on Climate Change,” which will open at Storm King Art Center in May.

Storm King Show to Focus on Climate Change in 2018

By Daniel McDermon

Storm King Art Center is best known for its grand landscape of rolling hills and its display of large-scale outdoor sculpture, including works by the likes of Richard Serra and Maya Lin. But for a special exhibition in 2018, this bucolic sculpture park in Orange County, N.Y., will focus directly on a hot political topic: climate change.

That subject “has always been very close to Storm King,” said the curator Nora Lawrence in an interview. “This is something that is very urgent for us, and we have seen some smaller changes already in our environment.”

“Indicators: Artists on Climate Change,” which opens May 19, will include work from more than a dozen artists, including several pieces newly created for the exhibition. It was organized by Ms. Lawrence, along with David Collens, Storm King’s director and chief curator, and Sarah Diver.

One participating artist is Mary Mattingly, the founder of Swale, a floating food forest on a barge that toured New York City in the summer, allowing visitors to harvest fresh produce for free. For Storm King, she is preparing an as-yet-untitled work in which she will bring trees from a tropical climate — mango, coconut and fig are in contention — to the Hudson River Valley, calling attention to the way that changing temperatures may affect the future of food.

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Maroesjka Lavigne from Robert Mann Gallery speaks to PHOTOFAIRS

PHOTOFAIRS | San Francisco is excited to announce Robert Mann Gallery will be taking part in this years fair, the gallery represents 20th century masters and an international cadre of emerging and mid-career artists working in photo-based art.

Hi Maroesjka, Can you tell us a bit about how you first got into photography?
I studied Audio-visual Arts in Secondary School but it only hit me how interesting photography was when I started studying Photography in High school (school of arts, Ghent- Belgium). When I saw how many different paths you could choose in photography and how you can really tell your story, something that otherwise perhaps would be inexplicable. I got very interested. Photography as an art medium is lovely. You can do it everywhere and whenever. It’s the perfect reason to travel, to look around and enrich your life. It’s perfect for curious people, I think.

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Artist Talk: Michael Kenna at Princeton University

Artist talk with Michael Kenna
Saturday, December 2nd at 2pm in McCosh 10

Widely considered one of the foremost landscape photographers of his generation, Michael Kenna has been looking at our world in ways quite out of the ordinary for more than forty years. In conjunction with the exhibition Rouge: Michael Kenna, the artist will speak to the experiences and influences of his photographic explorations. A reception in the Museum will follow.

Cig Harvey in The New York Times

Fairytale Photos of Everyday Life

By Jonathan Blaustein

Ask anyone who’s been in a serious car accident, and they’ll swear that reality moves in slow motion as metal crumples, glass shatters and bones break.

That kind of event can change one’s perspective, and for the photographer Cig Harvey, her brush with vehicular death in 2015 inspired her new series “You an Orchestra You a Bomb,” recently released by Schilt Publishing, which also opens as a solo exhibition at Robert Mann in New York on December 7. With its strong emphasis on evocative color and objects culled from the natural world, the project touches upon magic, mystery and fairy tales. One easily imagines Narnia just through the wardrobe door or Hogwarts awaiting at the end of the train ride. (Surprisingly, Ms. Harvey, who was born in England, has never read the Harry Potter books.)

As is her custom, the series features Ms. Harvey’s six-year-old daughter, Scout, along with other relatives and friends. And the narrative is clearly propelled by the motivations of a mother, one enraptured by life after a near-death experience.

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Holly Andres in Photo District News

ON LIGHTING STYLES: HOLLY ANDRES BREAKS DOWN HER PAINTERLY APPROACH

By Brienne Walsh

Holly Andres approaches lighting with the eye of a painter. “I studied painting, and I look through the lens like a painter,” she says. “I oftentimes shoot on a tripod. I’m considering all the entirety of the frame and looking at the way the positive form interacts with the negative space.”

She creates dramatic imagery on location, and while she sometimes mixes her light sources, she prefers artificial to natural lighting. “When natural light cooperates, it’s great, but otherwise, it’s so anxiety-producing,” she says. “Strobes, lanterns, reflectors—they take you much further in any direction you want your lighting to go.”

Andres made a name for herself with her fine-art photography series such as “The Fallen Fawn” and “Summer of the Hornets” that depict eerie scenes reminiscent of the photographs of Gregory Crewdson and the films of Todd Haynes. Her images are flush with color, and beautiful, but still transmit a sense of impending horror. Her distinct style has won over editorial and commercial clients including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York, TIME, Refinery29, Saks Fifth Avenue and Facebook.

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Jennifer Williams' Installation at Lily's Bar in the Roger Smith Hotel

Check out Jennifer Williams' piece, New York - City of Tomorrow: Billionaire's Row that is on view, originally installed at the Queens Museum in the Panorama of the City of New York for QI 2016. It's been reconfigured to fit Lily's Bar at the Roger Smith Hotel, situated a few blocks below Billionaire's Row, aka 57th street.

Read more on the artist and work here.