Nude Portrait, 2008, C-Print, 127 x 152.5 cm, edition of 3(From the press release)
27 February – 10 April 2009
The Groeflin Maag Galerie is pleased to present Portrait Studio, a fantastic new body of work by Daniel Gordon (*1980, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York). This is the third exhibition of the young, remarkable photographer at the gallery.
The 15 impressive photographs have originated in an elaborate working process, where Gordon, always in search of intriguing material, intensely rummages through the World Wide Web. He prints out thrilling pictures, trims them with a scalpel and constructs his own worlds; 3-dimensional sceneries, in which pieced together full-size human creatures and body parts are posing. During the working process the created figures attain human presence and loll gracefully like muses in front of the artist’s lens.
The photographs incorporate different takes on classic artist/muse relationships in literature and history, from Frankenstein to the inspiration Alfred Stieglitz found through Georgia O’Keefe. I have attempted to bring to life these cobbled together images of body parts through the magic of photography; with the acceptance that the human form can be simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, loved and exploited. Daniel Gordon
onestar press, Paris has published the book ”Portrait Studio” in conjunction with this exhibition.
In September Daniel Gordon’s works will be part of the exhibition “New Photography 2009″ at the MOMA in New York.
GROEFLIN MAAG GALERIE
Dienerstrasse 12
CH- 8004 Zürich
www.groeflinmaag.com
The gallery is open from Wednesday to Friday from 2-6 pm and Saturday from 12-4 pm or by appointment.
rom the popular settings of art history we can recall two faces of the crowd: the first, recognized as the holder of political will (demonstrations or revolutionary masses), appearing in many historical or allegorical paintings, and the second one – more neutral and more dispersed, usually connected to the representation of the city, modernity and urban life. Of course, the crowd is never neutral… Apparently nameless bodies, anonymous minds and ordinary settings are always producing narratives and images related to the dominant politics of public spaces.
