Robert Mann Gallery and The Monacelli Press invite you to a one-night exhibition and celebration of the new book from Paulette Tavormina, Seizing Beauty. This event will take place at Rizzoli Bookstore on Wednesday, May 11 from 6-8 pm
For more information, click here.
We are thrilled to share the news that gallery artist Maroesjka Lavigne has been awarded First Place in the 2016 Sony World Photography Awards for her series Land of Nothingness in the category of 'Landscape.'
We are pleased to share that Elisabeth Hase: An Independent Vision has been featured by El País magazine (Spain). To read the article, click here.
NYC Photography Exhibitions On View Now
“Elisabeth Hase: An Independent Vision” at Robert Mann Gallery
Robert Mann Gallery presents “Elisabeth Hase: An Independent Vision” on view from March 31 to May 7, 2016.
"An Independent Vision" introduces the work of Elisabeth Hase, a historic photographer largely unknown outside of Germany. Hase was capturing images during the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich and through post-WWII Germany with a uniquely independent point of view that was made possible by the establishment of her own studio and offer critiques and commentary following her own artistic sensibilities.
Hase's self-portraits were created with a large degree of role-playing. In many, she assumes a persona and plays out a scene in front of the camera. These works critique gender roles and explore personal identity. Hase also made images of still lives, street scenes and reportage. "An Independent Vision" is Hase's first exhibition outside of Germany. To view the full article click here.
We are happy to share with you the news of gallery artist, Holly Andres and her current museum exhibition The Homecoming at The Missoula Art Museum.
Holly Andres grew up in a fairly normal Missoula household, but her critically acclaimed photographs reimagine those years as anything but ordinary
Erika Fredrickson | April 7, 2016
Holly Andres was just a child when the church camp incident occurred. It was the summer of 1980 when a crew of stay-at-home moms gathered in the church kitchen to prepare a meal while the children played outside. As the kids ran through the grass, one boy fell from a dilapidated play structure and hit the ground hard. He was injured, but he'd be okay. It was what happened afterward that stuck in Andres' mind for years to come. To read the full article, please click here.
Queens International 2016
Queens Museum
April 10 - July 31, 2016
Created specifically for the Queens Museum’s Panorama of the City of New York, New York: City of Tomorrow is a large-scale photographic installation that addresses the rising skyline of the urban landscape from a pedestrian viewpoint. While entire neighborhoods have been reinvented due to ambitious renewal and development projects, the Panorama offers a miniature, three-dimensional opportunity to travel back in time to an earlier version of the five boroughs. Originally constructed as a descriptive tool for the 1964 World’s Fair, new construction has been added sparsely since its last restoration in 1992. Juxtaposing photographs of the miniature architectural models with street views of newly constructed buildings occupying the same locations today --including Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn, and Manhattan’s “Billionaire's Row”-- Williams’ dynamic collage exposes the monumental scale of rising capitalist interests and the shrinking perspective of the individual citizen. For more information about the exhibition, click here.
Art Once Hidden From Hitler, Now on View
The New York Times | Art Review
Vicki Goldberg | March 31, 2016
A woman out shopping has fallen — splat! — onto her face on a stairway, hat still primly on head, stocking seams properly straight, purse and one shoe gone astray. She is armored for a foray in search of department store bounty but this photograph is not a decisive moment. It is a bit of role-playing, a self-portrait in disguise, by Elisabeth Hase, a German photographer (1905-1991) who wore shirts and sometimes ties rather than heels and hats and looked down on women trapped in such decorum.
To continue reading, click here.
Interview with Maroesjka Lavinge, Land of Nothingness, Robert Mann Gallery
Aesthetica Magazine | March 8, 2016
Photographer Maroesjka Lavigne’s latest exhibition Land of Nothingness is currently on view at Robert Mann Gallery, New York. This new show, Lavigne’s second presentation with the gallery, invites viewers to step into the unforgiving landscape of Namibia – a country of deserts with barren stretches that yield only to subtle variations of the same aridness. From this desolation, Lavigne composes a visual symphony, where animals and the very landscape in which she finds herself appear to respond to her camera lens.
Longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2015 and previously featured in Aesthetica, Lavigne’s work has been shown internationally in Japan, Italy, and Belgium. Last year, she was awarded the Harry Pennings Award with her series, Not Seeing is a Flower, and she has also won a LensCulture New & Emerging Photographers Grand Prize. Previous projects have taken the artist to Iceland, where Lavigne captured the blue and fading lights of wintertime. We showcased Blue Lagoon in the Aesthetica Art Prize 2015 anthology.
A: What was it that drew you to Namibia for your work Land of Nothingness?
ML: I wanted to travel to a place where nature was still in charge. Following my journey to Iceland a few years ago, I started to miss this feeling of travelling through such a dominant landscape. Namibia is a place where you see more animals than humans and I think that’s great to experience.
A: Your images illuminate a sense of calm and tranquillity. Does this translate the sentiments you felt as an artist working in south west Africa?
ML: I think that’s definitely a result of nature still having the upper-hand here. Life goes at a much more natural pace. The distances we had to travel were so long you got into some sort of very slow state of mind. Not hurried, and with no stress. There was nowhere to rush to. The travel itself was the experience.
A: How does it feel to have your work represented and exhibited at the Robert Mann Gallery?
ML: It feels great of course. I actually still have to thank Aesthetica. Robert told me he saw my pictures in your magazine! So thank you! I’m very thankful to be represented by them, as I would never have been able to get this audience without them. It’s great to get a range of exposure so different kinds of people discover your work.
A: In which ways does this work connect with other projects and pieces, such as Blue Lagoon?
ML: As I said, I had the same state of mind in Iceland as in Namibia, and I think you can feel this through the pictures. There’s a sense of wanderlust and tranquillity in these projects because of the overwhelming nature in these places.
To view the interview on Aesthetica's website, click here.
The Beauty of Everyday India, the Vast Emptiness of Namibia
William Meyers | March 6, 2016
Maroesjka Lavigne has a talent for making do with very little. In “Ísland,” her 2014 exhibition at Mann, Ms. Lavigne (b. Belgium, 1989) showed pictures from Iceland, vast white swaths of snow in the middle of which would be a wee house or a single vehicle. The “Land of Nothingness” is Namibia, in southwest Africa, and the arid deserts are barren, with only an occasional tree and sparse shrubs. The sun is so intense it seems to have bleached the land; the colors are varied, but all are muted. Ms. Lavigne will typically place an animal, or some other object of interest, in the center of her image, the very place artists are taught in Photography 101 to avoid. For her, though, the compositional device seems to signify that the nothingness is not complete; look, a lioness! Or, look, an ostrich!
The ostrich’s black feathers stand out like an inkblot against the whitish plain and pale-blue sky. But the lioness’s tawny fur blends in with the faded colors of the shrubs in which she sits, staring inquisitively at the camera. Four giraffes travel single-file across the desert, their immense height miniaturized by their distance from the photographer. In “Gaze, Namibia” (2015) it is a man with binoculars who is dwarfed by the vastness of his surroundings. For “White Rhino, Namibia” (2015), however, Ms. Lavigne got so close to the beast that its monumental body almost fills the frame, its color mimicking the environment. Click here to view the feature.
The Power of the Constructed Image
SRQ Magazine
Philip Lederer | SRQ Daily Friday Weekend Edition | Friday March 4, 2016
Ringling College of Art and Design offers the antidote to Instagram culture with Photography & Film Constructs, the latest exhibition coming to the RCAD Willis A. Smith Galleries and featuring 20 works in photo and film from more than 15 award-winning international artists. Through a curated collection of constructed images, the show highlights artistic intentionality in the form while simultaneously celebrating the richness of the medium and evoking its power through history. “All of these images I chose because they’re layered and the artists are commenting on contemporary culture,” said Mark Ormond, curator of exhibitions at Ringling College. “In our daily lives, we have to be very focused, and these open our eyes to things in the world that we miss.”
To continue reading, click here.
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