(C) Maureen Mahony- Photography in the Abstract January 24, 2009

Photography in the Abstract
Curated by Maureen Mahony

Lora Reynolds Gallery
January 17 – February 28, 2009
Opening Reception, January 24, 6 - 8 pm; Curator talk begins at 7 pm

Lora Reynolds Gallery is pleased to present Photography in the Abstract, curated by New York based, independent curator Maureen Mahony.

This group exhibition examines the difficulties in defining the term “abstraction” in photography. Because the most literal and common purpose of photography is to record the surrounding world, abstraction may seem antithetical. However, since the invention of photography, artists have made use of the camera and the darkroom in ways that expand upon conventional picture taking. From close-cropping to photomontage, photogram, double exposure, the use of gels and lights, painting on images, soft focus, and beyond, artists have questioned the notion of perception and exact imitation, and used the medium itself as a source to explore abstraction.

Wolfgang Tillmans addresses questions of abstraction in photography directly by creating camera-less images in the darkroom. He has noted: “It’s always about the combination between the objective and abstract representations... For me, the abstract picture is already objective because it’s a concrete object and represents itself: the paper on which the picture is printed is for me an object, there is no separating the picture from that which carries it.”

This exhibition includes work from the 1930’s to the present - giving context to both historic and contemporary work that explores the potential for abstraction within the photographic language.

Artists include: Doug Aitken, Walead Beshty, Margaret Bourke-White, Harry Callahan, Liz Deschenes, Roe Ethridge, Tamar Halpern, Sandra Hamburg, Robert Heinecken, Rainer Judd, André Kertész, Christian Marclay, László Moholy-Nagy, Barbara Morgan, Mark Morrisroe, Peter Piller, Eileen Quinlan, Gerhard Richter, Lucas Samaras, Arthur Siegel, Aaron Siskind, David Smith, Wolfgang Tillmans, Andy Warhol and James Welling.

Official Website: http://www.lorareynolds.com