Above Image: Robert Polidori, 5417 Marigny Street, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery Right now, as I write these very words, I am in a room. I am sitting in Musée's Tribeca office twenty-two stories above the cabs, jack hammers, and dog walkers of the New York City streets. I am surrounded by white walls and lots of light let in by several large windows. I am sitting at the head of a rectangular table on which sits an assortment of computers, manila folders, binder clips, pens, and, on this warm July morning, a total of three iced coffees. I spend three days a week in this office, yet I have never once thought for more than a few moments about the space I inhabit here; not just what is here, but why is it here? Why am I here? How do I relate to this space and the items in it?
Tina Barney, The Brocade Walls, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery
Interiors, the current group show at Flowers Gallery, presents a series of images of interior spaces, in the process highlighting how interiors are used and perceived. From Tina Barney's images of well-to-do Europeans in their lavish, stuffy homes, to Nadav Kander's empty motel rooms from across the globe, the viewer is confronted with one simple concept that usually goes unexamined: interior spaces exist exclusively for human beings. These spaces, as plain or posh as they may be, provide shelter for us, house our belongings, and serve as meeting points and places of respite. Interior spaces thus play a significant role in human life. Yet how often are we aware, really aware, of the spaces we are in? Further still, how often are we aware of our responses to interior spaces and how they make us feel? Many of the photographs in this exhibition convey particular moods. However, it is not the photograph itself but the space presented in the photograph that causes one feeling over another. The notion of home is twisted in two entirely different directions in Edmund Clark's photographs of detainee camps at Guantanamo Bay paired with photographs of the residences where former inmates now reside. These images give vastly disparate definitions of security and comfort.
Nadav Kander, Love Hotel Carib I, Tokyo, 2005, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery
Each of the photographs featured in Interiors maintains a human connection to interior space. Whether or not people are present in the images, one is constantly reminded that this space exists for someone. Interior spaces are a microcosm of human life. Upon viewing these images one is met with the entire spectrum of human emotion and experience. We are where we live.
Interiors will be on view at Flowers Gallery through August 30.
Text by Nora Landes
Event photographs by Chad Smith
Lori Nix
Shen Wei