Art Out: But Still, It Turns, Robert Knight Thirteen Ways, Sacha Goldberger: "The 770: Lubavitchs of Brooklyn"
Curran Hatleberg, Lost Coast (8), 2014. © Curran Hatleberg
Through photographs, the prism of time is illuminated and breaks to clarity. We see the components and how they fit together. They take us on unexpected paths, they bring us to other lives we could know if life were to turn another way; they foster empathy. They allow us to recognize that life is not a story that flows to a neat finale; it warps and branches, spirals and twists, appearing and disappearing from our awareness.
This exhibition presents photography attuned to this consciousness, photography from the world, from life as it is—in all its complicated wonder—in the twenty-first-century United States: from Vanessa Winship’s peripatetic vision in she dances on Jackson through Curran Hatleberg’s gatherings of humankind in Lost Coast; Richard Choi’s meditation on the differences between the flow of life and our memory of it in What Remains; RaMell Ross’s images of quotidian life from South County; Gregory Halpern’s luminous Californian journey in ZZYZX; Piergiorgio Casotti and Emanuele Brutti’s Index G work on the delicate balance between economic theory and lived fact; Kristine Potter’s re-examination of the Western myth of manifest destiny in Manifest; or Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s braiding the power of images with the forces of history in All My Gone Life.
This photography is postdocumentary. No editorializing or reductive narrative is imposed. That there is no story is the story. For these artists, all is in play and everything matters—here is a freedom, hard won, sometimes confusing, but nonetheless genuine: a consciousness of life and its song. The world’s infinite consanguinity lies here: each of us and all of this exist in the fulsome now.
But Still, It Turns* is guest curated by Paul Graham. It is accompanied by a book published by MACK.
But Still, It Turns is on view at ICP from Feb 04, 2021 – May 09, 2021
For more infomation about the exhibition please check icp’s website.
Toy Soldier, 2019 ©2021 Robert Knight Photography, Gallery Kayafas
Robert Knight’s Thirteen Ways, is comprised of 32 color photographs, all portraits of his daughter, Eden, beginning with her birth in 2006 until the present. Knight’s projects are often autobiographical and reference the time and place of the moment. In 2008, the gallery exhibited Knight’s project, My Boat is so Small. These images of domestic interiors were specifically children’s rooms and the places in which they played. Looking at the space, we were asked to consider what has the child selected for their room, and what the parents added, often an indication of their expectations. As the Knight children grew, so did the changes of balance in the family. The next series, Sleepless, was a time-lapse study during sleeping hours exploring the light and sounds of which we are unaware as we sleep. The time lapse imaged the movement of the child throughout the night set in the stage of the immobile bed and room.
It is now 2021 and Eden is fifteen. The images in Thirteen Ways are personal and intimate, revealing the relationship between a father and his daughter and their bond that grows and changes as child becomes an adult.
“Thirteen Ways
”I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.””
Inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem, Thirteen Ways is a collection of photographs of my daughter since she was born in 2006. The project is at once both a reflection of a father’s nearly blind obsession with his child and a representation of the multiplicity of personalities that a young woman coming of age can choose to embody.
In addition to inkjet prints, the project includes non-traditional photographic prints, including intaglio prints and cyanotypes. Images were taken with an antique 4x5” view camera, medium format film cameras and various digital cameras. Robert Knight, 2021
Robert Knight’s Thirteen Ways is on view at Gallery Kayafas from January 29th – March 6th, 2021
© Sacha Goldberger I Courtesy of 28 Vignon Street
Sacha Goldberger - Sacha Goldberger: The 770: Lubavitchs of Brooklyn
Today we are flooded with abject, thoughtless, and even terrifying utterances of antisemitism all the time.
The Jewish community is stigmatized by proclamations of hatred and prejudice on a daily basis. To stand up against all the undignified trivializations, the smirking stares, the ignorant remarks, to pull the rug from under the feet of the haters, the best thing one can do is to respond with humanity’s greatest asset: humor.
“With my co-author Ben Bensimon, we wanted to offer a different vision of Judaism, at a time when antisemitism has become commonplace. With these images, we wanted to show a positive, poetic, spiritual and humorous view of the Jewish religion, an other way to fight preconceived beliefs.”
The men in black with hats are having fun in front of Sacha Goldberger’s lens. Their beards keep getting caught in doorways or car doors, they are carrying mountains of books; they are giving lectures while sitting on laundromats... In these images, the viewer sees joy, pleasure, faith, wisdom, and a passion for passing on traditions. The scenes are funny as well as moving. Here and now, the smile prevails.
The series was shot in Brooklyn in the center of the Lubavitch community, around 770 Eastern Parkway, in NY
The virtual show is on view at 28Vignonstreet Gallery
