In the series called Stage, Rhona Bitner goes further in her observation of the live show and transcends the interface between photography and theatricality. After working on circus and its actors in the Circus (1991-2001) and Clown (2001-2002) series the artist moves from the sandy circus ring to the worn-out stage floor. Now she no longer focuses on the people who make the show but instead on the very place where the show takes place: the stage. When empty, it is the very essence of theatre as a space for representation unfolding its own vocabulary: a unique decorum made of drapes, crimson velvet curtains, choreographed bunches of spotlights, colossal centre lights, a deep, heavy, silent and unsettling darkness.
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Rhona Bitner focuses on both the few moments opening the show and the seconds closing it. The lights in the room have been turned off, the stage is bathed in the light of the spots, the members of the audience are holding their breath and the actors are about to appear on the stage.
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In this big format series, the artist unveils the poetic and intense dimension to theatre as a space for experiences in view of the various human perceptions that photography tries to capture.
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Rhona Bitner lives and works in New York. In Paris she is represented by Galerie Xippas, in Boston by Howard Yezerski Gallery and in New York par CRG Gallery. Her photographs appear in the collections of the New York Whitney Museum of American Art, of the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain in Paris, of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.
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BFAS Blondeau Fine Arts Services will present 14 photographs by Rhona Bitner during the upcoming common opening with the “quARTier des Bains” galleries group in Geneva on September 14, 2006.
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A catalogue will be published before the end of the year in collaboration with Galerie Xippas, Paris, who presented this series in May-June 2006.
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BFAS - Blondeau Fine Art Services - 5, rue de la Muse - CH-1205 Genève
Exhibition: THU-FRI 14h-18h30 and SAT 11h-17h
