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David Trautrimas: The
Spyfrost Project
Gallery II Dylan Vitone: The Miami
Project
SHOW DATES: Sept. 11 – Nov. 5, 2010
RECEPTION: Sat., Sept 11, 6-8 pm
With artist talks at 5pm
DNJ Gallery is pleased to
announce its upcoming exhibition “The Spyfrost Project” featuring
photographs by the Toronto-based artist, David Trautrimas. Gallery II
presents the work of Dylan Vitone in a show entitled “The Miami Project.”
David Trautrimas dismantles and photographs conventional household objects
(from irons and refrigerators to vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers) and then
digitally reassembles them to create fantastic, modernist architectural
structures. “I became interested in the idea of creating fanciful
dwellings unfettered by zoning ordinances or the laws of physics,” he told
Penelope Green of the New York Times, “after noting the blandness of most
residential development.” His new project is a series of photographs of
imaginary Cold War military installations. Imposingly set in the
landscapes of abandoned bases in remote mountain and desert locations,
Trautrimas uses his functional building blocks to create quasi-futuristic,
fortified structures – as if Mies van der Rohe had designed a
thermos-shaped ICBM launch site in Montana. Both nostalgic and space age
at the same time, Trautrimas has discovered the magnificent and modern in
the empty and everyday.
David Trautrimas has exhibited in galleries throughout the United States
and Canada, and was recently featured in a group exhibition at the Museum
of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto. His work is included in the
collections of the New Mexico Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Bank Canada,
The Bank of Montreal, Foreign Affairs Canada and many other private
collections.
In his second solo show with DNJ Gallery, Dylan Vitone again displays
narrative panoramas documenting a unique location: the spectacle and
highly stylized glitz of Miami Beach. The “Miami Project” is a
continuation of Vitone’s use of the multi-exposure, panoramic process to
create layered documentary-style images that dissect his subjects from
varying angles and perspectives. These photographs focus on the ego-driven
characters that thrive both in the public eye and just below the surface
of ‘acceptable’ in Miami’s hyper-visual and narcissistic subcultures:
bodybuilders, porn stars, drug dealers, graffiti writers, and bikini
models. “Working in the tradition of street photographers and social
anthropologists such as Milton Rogovin and Bruce Davidson, Vitone makes
extended portraits of communities through intimate observations of their
everyday rituals.” (Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times)
Dylan Vitone has shown his photography in galleries nationally and is
included in many esteemed collections such as The Smithsonian Institute,
The Museum of Contemporary Photography, The George Eastman House and The
Portland Art Museum. He was named Emerging Artist of the Year in 2009 by
The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts with a review of this project appearing
in the “Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.”
dnj gallery; 154-1/2 north la brea avenue; los angeles, california
90036; phone:
323.931.1311; Website:
www.dnjgallery.net |
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THROUGH SEPTEMBER 4, 2010
Darryl Curran
The Daily Dose
Darryl Curran, Untitled (from "The Daily Dose"),
unique photogram, 2007
Photograms: Uniquely Simple
Guest Curator: Darryl Curran
Featured artists: Elizabeth Bryant, Jason Lazarus, Jerry Burchfield,
Robert Heinecken, Jonas Kulikauskas, Julia Schlosser, Laura Parker,
Marsha Red Adams, and Sheila Pinkel
Marsha Red Adams, Chichen Itza Dream,
1996, GSP photogram + negative
generated image, 20 x20 inches
DNJ
Gallery is pleased to announce, "Photograms: Uniquely Simple," a group
show curated by artist Darryl Curran. The exhibition features the work of
nine artists who have explored a minimal, straightforward process-the
photogram. By definition, "a photogram is a kind of photograph, although
made without a camera or lens by placing an object or objects on top of a
piece of paper or film coated with light-sensitive materials and then
exposing the paper to film or light." Experimentation with this simple
process produces complex visual wonders when manipulated by creative
artists.
Guest curator, Darryl Curran, lives and works in Los Angeles. For the past
forty years he has sought to expand the definition of 'photography' to
include experiments of the medium in its many forms, including camera and
film, light as subject, camera-less image-making, obsolete photographic
printing processes and scanner as camera. Curran's work is in the
permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art; the International
Museum of Photography/George Eastman House; Fogg Museum, Harvard
University and others. His work has been shown nationally and
internationally.
Robert Heinecken's photograms are chancy explorations into pages from
women's magazines, where the overlap of imagery from one side of the
printed page interacts with the image/text on the other side. Where as
most photograms are negative, his images are positive, made on Ilford's
Cibachrome (now called Ilfachrome) material.
Jerry Burchfield also explored Cibachrome, using projections, direct
exposure, objects and people. He documented his Hawaiian shirt collection
in reference to Pop Art. His "Amazon" Lumen prints are like no other
images ever made. While on the Amazon River, he collected plant material
and placed specimens on outdated, exposed black and white photographic
paper. Plant and paper were in contact in the sun for hours as the two
blended and exchanged their various chemical components. Results were
varied, but we only present the finest.
Like Jerry, Julia Schlosser forges a documentary strategy. Her animal
accessory cyanotypes, made of toys, leashes, and collars, are named and
dated to generate a tongue in cheek scientific air.
Jason Lazarus' "Heinecken Studies" photograms were made with a portion of
the cremated remains of the late Robert Heinecken (with the permission of
the Heinecken Estate). This work is firmly in the 'documentary' camp,
although the abstract images created seem either galactic or microscopic.
The work is a conceptual homage to Heinecken and his image making process.
Jonas Kulikauskas shows a large cyanotype piece, "A.U.M (Assets Under
Management) No. 1." The title parodies Wall Street corporate language, and
Jonas makes a big statement using a simple metaphor for stock market
excesses.
Laura Parker's beautiful, fundamental photograms, negatives and positives,
salute the simple yet profound Noguchi paper lamp. She took the process
further by contact printing her first negative prints onto fresh
photographic paper to make the positive image. This process refers back to
experiments by the English inventor, Henry Fox Talbot, who explored a
similar but more primitive negative to positive process in the 1830's.
Marsha Red Adams' unique enlargement photograms shows another creative
approach to the medium. Her connection to time and place, signs and
symbols, land and spirit and performance based art propel her
investigations of camera and camera-less hybrids.
Elizabeth Bryant, similar to Marsha, combines objects, symbols, toys,
logos, and shapes into complex commentaries on social and political
issues. Her photograms present overlapping layers of imagery and text both
passive and potent. Her "Police Target" pieces examine a mix of conflicts
associated with civil obedience and disobedience, law enforcement and
freedom of choice.
The darkroom has been Sheila Pinkel's creative laboratory since the early
1970's. In her lab, she fashions illusionary images using the simplest
means: photographic paper, bits of string and light. Her luminous, subtle,
nuanced images reveal the poetry of the black and white photographic
process in the hands of a master.
Gallery II presents a solo exhibition of new work by Darryl Curran. "Daily
Dose" includes 365 autobiographic gum-pigment photograms created every day
in 2007. The disciplined process tracks Curran's artistic choices (color
palette, type of objects-- kitchen, office or garden, mechanical or
organic, and multi-color or single, etc.) and creates a document of the
objects, juxtapositions, associations, and the fine distinction of light
and shadow that preoccupied the artist over the course of one year. The
work in the exhibition is a credit to the process and the system.
dnj gallery; 154-1/2 north la brea avenue; los angeles, california
90036; phone:
323.931.1311; Website:
www.dnjgallery.net |
