Issue No. 28 – Control

What is the nature of control? The desire for it—and to be free of it—are essential parts of both life and art.

Karine Laval at Benrubi Gallery

Karine Laval at Benrubi Gallery

By Daniel Kapp

Photo by Nora Wilby

Photo by Nora Wilby

The Benrubi Gallery was pleased to announce Karine Laval’s fifth solo exhibition, Artificial by Nature, on May 19, 2016.

The main space of the gallery features photographs from Laval’s recent series Heterotopia, which is comprised of dense and distorted layers of varying natural environments. In employing mirrors and sheets of glass in her compositions, it is perspective that becomes most skewed. The effect of morphing common sceneries of accepted realities offers a particularly reflective experience for the viewer. Laval keeps certain layers untouched, though, leaving viewers resting between a comfortable, natural environment and an unfamiliar, out of this worldly scene.

Photo by Nora Wilby

Photo by Nora Wilby

In the gallery’s project room are selections from another of Laval’s series, Black Palms. Featuring solarized images of Los Angeles palm trees, the results are staggering. With vast black backgrounds, the silver etchings of the palms cut powerfully across in all directions. The two series, Black Palms and Heterotopia, leave viewers both uneasy and uplifted simultaneously. In shifting such familiar imagery, the two series point out the accepted patterns and subconscious associations we make daily and force us to internalize them.

Photo by Nora Wilby

Photo by Nora Wilby

Laval, based in Brooklyn, NY, has been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and internationally at such venues as the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, The Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and at several photo festivals throughout Europe and the US.

Artificial by Nature is on view until July 1, 2016 at the Benrubi Gallery at 521 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY. 

 

Article by Daniel Kapp

Photographs courtesy of Nora Wilby

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