Sara VanDerBeek, Medusa, 2007, digital C-print, 40" x 30", edition 1/3 with 2 APs, courtesy of D'Amelio Terras, New York

I Am Eyebeam
curated by Melanie Schiff and Lorelei Stewart

October 16-November 17, 2007
Reception: Wednesday, October 17, 2007, 5-8 pm

Across a range of approaches—from figurative to textual, collage to process-based, textual to perceptual—twelve artists investigate the properties of the photographic in its current broad social implications. In these works basic conditions of photography: its flatness; its indexicality; the apparatus of camera, film or paper; a relationship to time, memory, document, reportage, as they are figured in early 21st century culture are challenged or expanded.

The particularity of this photographic specificity belies the works important address of human and representational limits. The reconfigured, reorganized and destabilized perceptual and representational strategies of these works reveal the fissures between our current modes of representing, experiencing and conceiving of ourselves in the world.

What these artists do is re-address the conditions of photography that continue to affect our understandings of selfhood. With references to photographic precedents, such as early modern processes, the 1980s 'Pictures' generation, or conceptual uses of photography as documents, these artists rework photographic and historical categories at the same time that they address questions of spectatorship and self conception.

Events:

Curators’ gallery talk: Tuesday, October 30, 2007, 6 pm

Related film and video screening curated by Ben Russell:
Wednesday, November 14, 2007, 7:30 pm

Walead Beshty, Fold (45 degree directional light source), December 23rd, 2006, Valencia, CA, Ilford Multigrade Fiber IV, 2007, black-and-white photographic print, 100" x 60", courtesy Wallspace, New York

Craig Doty, Untitled, 2007, archival ink jet print, 26" x 34", courtesy of the artist

Reviews

Artforum Online -- November 6, 2007