Lucy Raven, Subterrestrial Cinema, 2017–18. Color video, with sound, 28 min., 5 sec. Derived from a performance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, July 18, 2017. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photo… — Lucy Raven, *Subterrestrial Cinema*, 2017–18. Color video, with sound, 28 min., 5 sec. Derived from a performance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, July 18, 2017. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Council 2018.46. © Lucy Raven.

Re/Projections: Video, Film, and Performance for the Rotunda

Exhibition: In-Between Days: Video from the Guggenheim Collections
Venue: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York
Location: Rotunda
Dates: March 19–April 19, 2021

(NEW YORK, NY—March 15, 2021)—Conceived amid the historic social and cultural transformations of the past year, Re/Projections: Video, Film, and Performance for the Rotunda rethinks the Guggenheim’s iconic architecture as a site of assembly, reflection, and amplification. The series comprises four distinct projects that occupy the entire rotunda one at a time. In-Between Days: Video from the Guggenheim Collections, a screening program of videos from the museum’s permanent collection, is on view from March 19 to April 19, 2021. It is followed by site-specific, immersive installations by artists Christian Nyampeta, Ragnar Kjartansson, and Wu Tsang. Each of these varied presentations draws on the building’s unique capacity for distanced gathering to create frameworks for dialogue and mutual care.

The experimental approach behind Re/Projections is designed to privilege multiple voices while remaining nimble in a moment of economic and public health crises. With its focus on video, film, and performance, the series also celebrates acts of embodiment, storytelling, and interpersonal connection. As audiences convene in the Guggenheim’s landmark space, they will encounter new visions for navigating tensions between collective and individual experience, asking how we might live together better in an increasingly polarized world.

Sky Hopinka, Fainting Spells, 2018. Color video, with sound, 10 min., 45 sec. Courtesy the artist; Broadway, New York; and Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. © Sky Hopinka — Sky Hopinka, *Fainting Spells*, 2018. Color video, with sound, 10 min., 45 sec. Courtesy the artist; Broadway, New York; and Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. © Sky Hopinka

In-Between Days: Video from the Guggenheim Collections is organized by Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media.

Opening one year after the Guggenheim closed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, In-Between Days highlights videos that explore themes of isolation, confrontation, and occupation—states of being that have come to set the terms of daily life for so many. Several works portray solitary or paired figures engaged in moments of struggle, perseverance, or introspection. Some consider ways that historical systems of power are embedded in architecture and the land. Still others depict realms of fantasy, offering moments of respite through dreamlike or abstract images. The selection of videos reflects the global diversity of the Guggenheim’s collecting practices over the past decade. All works are shown here for the first time in the museum’s galleries.

The In-Between Days program is presented in two parts, with five videos appearing from March 19 to April 3 and five from April 4 to 19. A half-hour intermission takes place every day in the early afternoon. Featured artists from March 19 to April 3 are Meriem Bennani, Sky Hopinka, Jesper Just, Liz Magic Laser and Simone Leigh in collaboration with Alicia Hall Moran, and Lawrence Lek. Featured artists from April 4 to 19 are Ali Cherri, Shezad Dawood, Steffani Jemison, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Lucy Raven. More information on each of the artworks is available here.

Following In-Between Days, three artist installations will be presented in the spring and summer:

Christian Nyampeta: Sometimes It Was Beautiful
On view April 30–June 21, 2021
Organized by Xiaoyu Weng, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Associate Curator

Ragnar Kjartansson: Romantic Songs of the Patriarchy
On view July 2–5, 2021
Organized by Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media, with Terra Warren, Curatorial Assistant

Wu Tsang: Anthem (working title)
On view July 23–September 6, 2021
Organized by X Zhu-Nowell, Assistant Curator

Kurt Markus Dunes Namibia Africa

Obscura Gallery launches our 2021 season with a solo exhibition of Kurt Markus’s dune forms photographed in Namibia, Africa, home to the largest sand dunes in the world. These images celebrate the meditative beauty found in these sensual shapes and forms created by the winds and natural forces ever-changing this unique landscape set within the coastal desert of Namibia. This is Kurt’s second solo show at Obscura Gallery focusing on his personal work in the landscape, the first being an exhibition of Monument Valley landscapes in 2018. Markus approaches this landscape with the same respect and admiration, demonstrating his attunement with the natural world as one would be when impacted on a spiritual level. Many of the images included in the exhibition were taken at Sossusvlei, in the southern part of the Namib Desert, which is a salt and clay ‘pan’ surrounded by sand dunes uniquely red in color and which are 5 million years old.

Kurt says of this work, “These photographs were made in Namibia, Africa a kind of dune capital of the world. My trip there, in 2001, was exploratory, the second and third trips were for keeps.

Alone, I spent two weeks each time, visiting with nothing on my mind but shouldering my camera and entering a landscape that would be totally transformed by light. Shapes and lines, invisible in the flat illumination of midday, etched themselves wonderfully on my film come morning and late afternoon.

Bill Brandt: Perspective of Nudes

The Directors of Marlborough New York are pleased to present Bill Brandt: Perspective of Nudes, an exhibition of seminal nude photographs spanning the career of German-born British photographer Bill Brandt (1904-1983). The exhibition will open on Friday, March 12, 2021, and remain on view through Saturday, May 8, 2021. Composed of 35 photographs, the exhibition explores Brandt’s longitudinal study of the nude feminine form between 1945-1979. The accompanying gallery publication will feature an essay by Martina Droth, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Yale Center for British Art, and Paul Messier, Head of the Lens Media Lab at the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale University.

Bill Brandt first gained recognition as a photojournalist in the 1930s and 1940s, capturing images of all levels of British society for magazines like Lilliput, Picture Post, and Harper’s Bazaar. After turning his focus to nude photography for over a decade, he published his milestone photo book Perspective of Nudes (1961), and in 1969 he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which traveled internationally. Brandt’s first exhibition at Marlborough New York in 1976 was a critical turning point in situating his work within the context of fine art.

Initially influenced by the work of Man Ray, Brandt’s earliest experiments with nude photography took place in Paris before the Second World War. But it wasn’t until his return to the genre in 1944, while back in England, that his explorations into the body’s sculptural potential within

the two-dimensional space of the photographic print spurred a painstaking, long-term study, largely unencumbered by idealized classical conventions.

Brandt’s concurrent discovery of a Kodak camera with a wide-angle lens, allowing for the use of extreme depth of field along with formal and spatial distortions, provided him with a direction for aesthetic inquiry which would guide the evolution of his nude photography over the years. Such distortions to the feminine body flouted the supposed proportional perfection of the classical nude of western art history, in favor of the more strange and quotidian. Furthermore, his use of stark contrasts between brightly lit forms and dark black shadows suggested an ongoing interplay between strict dichotomies: foreground and background, presence and absence, subject and object.

Later, a second series of nudes would develop from the first, which had mainly been captured in the privacy of London interiors. Inspired by travels in France and his own resulting work in landscape photography, these later images analogize and juxtapose the forms and textures of the feminine nude with and against the organic forms of the harsh, stony beaches of southern England and northern France.

Bill Brandt is currently the subject of a retrospective exhibition organized by KBr Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona (2020-21), traveling to Versicherungskammer Kulturstiftung, Munich (March - May 2021); Sala Recoletos Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid (June - September 2021); and FOAM, Amsterdam (September 2022 - January 2023); as well as Bill Brandt / Henry Moore, organized by the Yale Center for British Art in partnership with The Hepworth Wakefield, accompanied by a major new book published by Yale University Press.

Events

Tanisha C. Ford in conversation with Jamel Shabazz

Artist Discussion

March 30, 7pm

548 West 28th Street, 4th Floor

Aperture and Rockefeller Center are pleased to host a discussion between esteemed photographer Jamel Shabazz and writer Tanisha C. Ford. Since the early 1980s, Shabazz has photographed New York’s street life and hip-hop culture with joy, verve, and style. His work not only captures the essence and pureness of hip-hop culture in New York, but also the deep connections he has with his subjects and community. For this event, Shabazz and Ford will discuss Shabazz’s career, his lasting legacy, how quarantine has given him time to rediscover hidden gems in his archive, and the installation of work at Rockefeller Center through April.

One year after New York City shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Aperture magazine released “New York,” an extraordinary issue honoring the city through photographs and essays by visionary artists and writers, reminding us of how much there is to discover, and relish, when New York comes roaring back. Coinciding with “New York” is a monthlong celebration of NYC at Rockefeller Center featuring a public photography exhibition, virtual talk series, pop-up store and gallery.

Book Event—Richard Misrach on Landscape and Meaning

Join ICP and Aperture online for a conversation between photographers Richard Misrach, Meghann Riepenhoff, and Lucas Folgia on the occasion of the sixth installation of Aperture’s Photography Workshop Series, Richard Misrach on Landscape and Meaning. Led by ICP Managing Director of Programs David Campany, the photographers will discuss their creative process and approach with landscape photography, while sharing insights into the making of the book.

This program is free with a suggested donation of $5. Reserve your copy of Richard Misrach on Landscape and Meaning (Aperture) through ICP’s shop.

We need your support. Concerned photography is needed now more than ever. Admission to this virtual program is free with a suggested donation ($5)—help keep public programs accessible to all by donating today.

About the Program Format

This program will take place on Zoom. Those who register to attend will receive a confirmation email with a link located at the bottom of the email under ‘Important Information’ to join the lecture through a computer or mobile device.

We recommend participants download the Zoom app on their device prior to the program. Learn how to download the latest version of Zoom to your computer or mobile device.

If you have not received the Zoom link by 2 PM on the day of the lecture or if you have questions about the virtual lecture, please contact: programs@icp.org.

About Richard Misrach on Landscape and Meaning

In the sixth installment of the Photography Workshop Series, Richard Misrach—well known for sublime and expansive landscapes that focus on the relationship between humans and their environment—offers his insight into creating photographs that are visually beautiful and contain cultural implications.

Aperture Foundation works with the world’s top photographers to distill their creative approaches to, teachings on, and insights into photography—offering the workshop experience in a book. Our goal is to inspire photographers at all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Through images and words, in this volume Misrach shares his own creative process and discusses a wide range of issues, from the language of color photography and the play of light and atmosphere, to transcending place and time through metaphor, myth, and abstraction.

Speakers

Richard Misrach is one of the most influential color photographers of his generation. His work is held in the collections of over fifty major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. His previous Aperture titles include Destroy This Memory (2010), Golden Gate (2012), Petrochemical America (with Kate Orff, 2012), The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings (2015), and Border Cantos (with Guillermo Galindo, 2016).

Meghann Riepenhoff’s work has been exhibited and is held in the collections at the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), and the Worcester Art Museum. Additional collections include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which holds Riepenhoff’s 12’x18’ unique cyanotype. Additional exhibitions include Yossi Milo Gallery, Jackson Fine Art, Galerie du Monde, Euqinom Projects, the Aperture Foundation, San Francisco Camerawork, the Denver Art Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston).

Publications include ArtForum, Aperture PhotoBook Review, the New York Times, Time magazine’s Lightbox, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Oprah Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Wired, and Photograph. Her first monograph Littoral Drift + Ecotone was published by Radius Books and Yossi Milo Gallery.

Riepenhoff is the recipient of a Fleishhacker Foundation grant, residencies at the Banff Centre, Rayko, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and an affiliate studio award at the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is a 2018–2019 Guggenheim Fellow.

Riepenhoff is based in Bainbridge Island, WA and San Francisco, CA. She received a BFA in Photography from the University of Georgia, and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. She is from Atlanta, GA.

Lucas Foglia is a fine-art photographer who examines the intersections between humans and wild spaces. His recent book and traveling exhibition, Human Nature, focuses on people in diverse ecosystems who care for nature in the context of climate change. Foglia exhibits his work internationally, and his prints are in notable collections including International Center of Photography, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. His images have appeared in magazines including National Geographic magazine and the New York Times Magazine. Foglia also collaborates with non-profit organizations including the Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy. Foglia grew up on a small family farm in New York and currently lives in San Francisco.

Rachel Phillips: Home from the Field

Gallery Talk

April 7

2635 Colquitt St Houston, TX

Gallery owner Catherine Couturier will be in conversation with exhibiting artist Rachel Phillips to discuss her ongoing show Home from the Field on Wednesday, April 7th, 7:00-8:00 PM CT. The event will be held online.

Plesae click here to register this event.

Artist Talk with Irina Rozovsky

Aperture and Rockefeller Center, in collaboration with Parsons School of Design and MACK, is pleased to present an artist talk with Irina Rozovsky as she discusses her project In Plain Air (2011–20), featured in the “New York” issue of Aperture magazine. For ten years, Rozovsky has been making lyrical portraits of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park—both of the landscape and its visitors—perfectly capturing the democratic nature of the space. From images of women fishing to family barbeques to young couples in the grass, In Plain Air is a lover letter to Prospect Park and all those who spend time there.

One year after New York City shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Aperture magazine released “New York,” an extraordinary issue honoring the city through photographs and essays by visionary artists and writers, reminding us of how much there is to discover, and relish, when New York comes roaring back. Coinciding with “New York” is a monthlong celebration of NYC at Rockefeller Center featuring a public photography exhibition, virtual talk series, pop-up store and gallery.

Irina Rozovsky (born in Moscow, 1981) recently published her third book, In Plain Air (2021). Her work has been exhibited in numerous international venues, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Museum of Modern Art’s Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020, New York. In 2021, she will participate in exhibitions at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark, and Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany. Rozovsky lives in Athens, Georgia, where she and her husband, Mark Steinmetz, run the photography space The Humid. She is currently an MFA thesis advisor for the photography program at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, and is represented by Claxton Projects, New York.

Programming for Aperture’s “New York” issue is made possible by and in collaboration with Rockefeller Center. Additional support for this program is provided by MPB.com.

Mar 26 Art Out: Re/Projections, Kurt Markus, Bill Brandt