Ron Norsworthy @ Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC - "I, Nacissus" Exhibition

Ron Norsworthy: I, Narcissus

Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

November 14 - December 21, 2024

RON NORSWORTHY

Considering Narcissus, 2024

Mixed media collage in relief on wood panel

© Ron Norsworthy, courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery

Edwynn Houk Gallery presents I, Narcissus, an exhibition of new work by RON NORSWORTHY that is the artist’s first with the gallery after announcing representation in 2023. 

Centered around Ron Norsworthy’s long standing interest in spatial poetics, narrative and allegory, these eleven works provide an extended reflection on both the personal experience and social construction of beauty, while also reconsidering narcissism as a virtue of self-love. Expressed through Norsworthy’s distinctive process of creating digital collages and then translating them into three-dimensional form—what he calls paintings—the works oscillate between their photographic illusion and the transparency of their making.

Ron Norsworthy uses the myth of Echo and Narcissus as a thematic point of departure for the exhibition, reinterpreting the myth’s central narrative thread through a contemporary sensibility. Originating from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the story told of how Narcissus, after spurning Echo’s love, was cursed to love in such a way that could never be reciprocated. After then seeing himself reflected in a pool of water and becoming infatuated with his own beauty, he was unable to remove himself from that spot, eventually dying long after his youth passed and with it the source of his original affection. Though often invoked today as a cautionary tale about the consequences of excessive self-regard and admiration, Ron Norsworthy would have us reframe the story to produce an entirely new set of questions: What exactly is wrong with loving oneself? Who does society deem to be beautiful, and why? If beauty is a social construction, then what else might be as well?

These are questions that Ron Norsworthy explores through both the literal and figurative construction of I, Narcissus’ eleven works. Each begins as a digital collage composed of photographs mined and made from the internet’s vast visual landscape and eventually transferred to wood panel, with certain areas or details being given several layers of nearly-overlapping relief. What illusion his images achieve is intentionally undermined, or undone altogether, by the visibility of the plywood relief. In a related way, the beauty of Norsworthy’s subjects and the spaces they inhabit are typically at odds with the spatial incongruencies he leaves for us to notice. Through his use of physical layering and metaphoric reference, Ron Norsworthy creates architectural inconsistencies that paradoxically compliment his subjects while being central to each work’s presentation as well. The scenes he builds are often psychologically evocative while being narratively oblique: details may be richly specific, but their past and future importance remains permanently unclear, leaving us to impart meaning or significance.

Ron Norsworthy reimagines Echo and Narcissus primarily through its central theme of reflection. With a different Narcissus appearing in each work, so too do the ideas of reflection and tone of contemplation change. In some, as in Narcissus, Dearest, the subject sits upright while turning away from us to gaze at his own mirrored image, of which we only see part of, leaving us to focus instead on the room and an open door beyond it leading off into the lush outdoors. In others, as in Narcissus In Rollers, the subject’s face is all that we see, adorned as it is with rollers, a silk headscarf and sunglasses, and the reflection is captured by the glasses in a prismatic assortment of colors while we can imagine Narcissus considering his own beauty in a moment of repose. Absent from these scenes, however, is the tragic or consequential mythical element. Instead, the works take on an allegorical function and offer discrete commentaries on the multivalent experience of self-contemplation, of which beauty is but one part.

The figurative and interpretative depth in these works is typical of Ron Norsworthy and his penchant for creating scenes that are personally inflected without being overly specific; images that suggest internal coherence and representational verisimilitude while also calling into question the very possibility of those qualities. Though these images may lure us into believing their illusion—into seeing and appreciating their beauty—they also ask us to consider how and why we might have done so in the first place.

RON NORSWORTHY - BIOGRAPHY

Ron Norsworthy is an interdisciplinary artist whose broad practice engages the fields of art, architecture, filmmaking and design. Informing his work is a foundational belief that the rooms, spaces and environments we inhabit and interact with speak volumes not only about who we are now, but also about our dreams, aspirations and our struggles as well. Through the creation of collaged reliefs, decorative objects, textiles and installations, his work carries the viewer through a non-linear, layered story of his life, one shaped by his lived experience as a queer person of the global majority.

Ron Norsworthy was born in South Bend, Indiana and currently lives and works in Connecticut and New Jersey, respectively. His work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem, NY; The Old Stone House, Brooklyn, NY; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; The Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY; Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT; Standard Space, Sharon, CT; Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ; the International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, NE; the New York Historical Society, NYC; the Governor’s Island Art Fair, Governors Island, NY; the Armory Show, NY; Paris Photo; and it is also in the permanent collection of the Newark Museum of Art. In 2023, Ron Norsworthy was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in Visual Arts. 

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY

745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10151

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Photographer Mona Kuhn @ Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC - Between Modernism and Surrealism

Mona Kuhn 

Between Modernism and Surrealism 

Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York 

Through 25 May 2024

Edwynn Houk Gallery presents “Mona Kuhn: Between Modernism and Surrealism,” an exhibition of 7 solarized photographs by Mona Kuhn from her series Kings Road in dialogue with artworks by masters exploring surreal representation, including Man Ray, Láslzó Moholy-Nagy, Dora Maar, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Bill Brandt. 

Mona Kuhn’s portraits visualize an uncanny love story. Kuhn’s solarized photographs in this exhibition follow a young woman throughout the groundbreaking mid-century modernist home designed by architect Rudolph Schindler in West Hollywood. In this mysterious narrative, Mona Kuhn explores the core themes of Surrealism — dreams, desire, creation, and a challenge to conventional modes — through this autonomous woman. An active subject, she seeks formal and spiritual union with the King’s Road House, an avant-garde center of its day and a symbol of community and creativity. Mona Kuhn’s solarization pushes these scenes further into the otherworldly, dissolving the aesthetic distinction between the human body, and its presence within the building. Rendered in layers of oxidized silver, body parts and architectural elements mirror and dissolve into each other, and the woman’s silver shadow cast on the building creates a literal space of integration.

The breakthrough of Surreal explorations in photography are widely traced to Man Ray’s experimentations, which radically expanded the horizons of photography beyond straight representation. This show presents two of the artist’s solarized gelatin silver prints, a technique that he discovered with Lee Miller in 1931: a nude portrait of Meret Oppenheim posing in front of Salvador Dalí’s painting, printed on a carte-postale, as well as a portrait. Both the figure of the mysterious woman and architecture were key motifs used by Surrealists and artists influenced by the movement, and photographs by László Moholy-Nagy, Dora Maar, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Bill Brandt open a historical dialogue with Kuhn’s practice.

MONA KUHN (b. 1969, São Paulo) has used photography for more than 20 years to re-examine figurative discourse. “Mona Kuhn: Between Modernists and Surrealists” is her third exhibition with Edwynn Houk Gallery. Her work is in private and public collections worldwide, including The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; George Eastman House Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Musée de l'Elysée, Switzerland; Musée de la Photographie de Charleroi, Belgium; Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Japan; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Louvre Museum, Paris; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; and the Buhl Foundation, New York. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY

745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10151

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MONA KUHN: BETWEEN MODERNISM AND SURREALISM

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY - 4 APRIL - 25 MAY 2024

Sebastiaan Bremer @ Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC - Nocturne

Sebastiaan Bremer: Nocturne
Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
February 13 - March 21, 2020

Edwynn Houk Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new work by Sebastiaan Bremer (Dutch, b. 1970). Nocturne marks the debut of several series of portraiture that Sebastiaan Bremer has been developing over the course of the past two years, culminating in the monumental triptych, Storm Breaking Over a Valley, 2020. Each unique image in the exhibition is characterized by Sebastiaan Bremer’s meticulously hand painted white pointillist dots, however these three new series are distinct in the evolution of the techniques used, as he continues to push the bounds of his hybrid creative process. 

In Veronica, Sebastiaan Bremer furthers his investigation into personal memories, a common thread throughout his oeuvre, by reinterpreting a series of candid pictures of his mother Veronica, taken by his father when she was the same age as the artist. He engages with the silver gelatin prints by altering the surface through hand painting as well as incorporating elements of collage and layering, lending a sculptural quality to the prints. These images are a meditation on family history and relationships, but also function as a vehicle for self-reflection for Sebastiaan Bremer, who sees himself in the expressions of his mother.

The series of five portraits inspired by the work of Rembrandt are a collection of exquisitely detailed character studies, hand painted onto black gloss paper. In a departure from his earlier work, Sebastiaan Bremer has eliminated the underlying source material, revealing his technical mastery in delicately rendering the chiaroscuro faces that emerge from darkness, to create what he describes as “an impossible photograph.” Sebastiaan Bremer is particularly drawn to the work of his fellow Dutchman because of the panoply of facial expressions Rembrandt was so brilliantly able to capture, and his ability to illustrate honestly, but with a subtle sense of humor, the wear and tear that human existence takes on each person’s face, regardless of gender, age, or social standing.

These portraits as well as the Veronica series can be interpreted as studies of the expression of human emotion, ranging in both mood and tension. Sebastiaan Bremer’s exploration of the human condition reaches a crescendo with the triptych, Storm Breaking Over a Valley, an incredibly elaborate opus on the state of the world and the position of humankind throughout history, illustrated through an outpouring of humanity, eras, and souls emerging from the waterfalls and richly textured landscape. The deluge of swirling rapids rushing through the tableau is palpable, as it envelops the cast of figures taken from the pages of history. Sebastiaan Bremer again employs stylistic references to the etchings of Rembrandt, as well as Leonardo da Vinci’s depictions of water, evoking the heightened sensibility of an Old Master painting. Painstakingly hand painted over a two-year period, the triptych is a symphony of visual information and a feat of obsessive dedication and curiosity. Invoking the sense of wit that he so admires in the work of Rembrandt, Sebastiaan Bremer reminds us with this imagined scene that predicting the end of time is as old as history itself, and it is our hubris that allows us to believe that the times we live in are really it.

Sebastiaan Bremer studied at the Vrije Academie, The Hague and Skowhegan School of Art and Sculpture, Maine. The artist currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been the subject of three major catalogs: Monkey Brain (2003), Avila (2006), and To Joy (2015), and has been exhibited in such venues as the Tate Gallery, London; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; and the Aldrich Museum, Connecticut. Sebastiaan Bremer’s work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY
745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10151
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Arno Rafael Minkkinen @ Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC - Fifty Years

Arno Rafael Minkkinen: Fifty Years
Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
4 January - 8 February 2020

Edwynn Houk Gallery presents Arno Rafael Minkkinen: Fifty Years, an exhibition of black and white photographs commemorating the artist’s half a century long career. Selected from his expansive oeuvre, these fifteen images encompass every decade since Arno Rafael Minkkinen began photographing in the early 1970s and span the globe, featuring his native Finland, his later homes of New York City and Andover, Massachusetts, as well as locations ranging from China to Portugal. 

Celebrating fifty years since Arno Rafael Minkkinen embarked on his epic exploration of the central theme of his nude body in nature, the exhibition illustrates his work’s continuous capacity for innovation and self-reflection. Relying purely on the primal abilities of his own body, Arno Rafael Minkkinen contorts his limbs into gravity defying poses that often appear physically impossible. The artist never digitally manipulates his negatives and works alone using a simple 9-second shutter release, affording him just a few moments to pose for each photograph. The resulting images are characterized by stillness and tranquility, but the process can be quite difficult or even dangerous, as Arno Rafael Minkkinen pushes the limits of his body to capture each shot.

Deeply inspired by nature, Arno Rafael Minkkinen allows the organic forms in his outdoor surroundings to guide the compositions of his images and the shapes his body assumes. He creates surreal self-portraits by seamlessly blending his own body with the natural elements so that each photograph becomes a visual puzzle of where the landscape ends and his limbs begin—as he “makes communion” with nature. His works are a reminder of the fickle nature of perception, and his process is a meditation on the interconnectedness of humans and nature, and how we experience the world around us through our physical bodies. Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s photographs are at once visceral and poetic, each one a new discovery in what he describes as his “continuity of vision.”

Arno Rafael Minkkinen received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1974 and is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The recipient of the 2006 Finnish State Art Prize in Photography, the Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art in 2013, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2015, Arno Rafael Minkkinen has also been knighted by the Finnish government with the Pro Finlandia Order of the Lion medal. Arno Rafael  Minkkinen’s work has been the subject of eight solo monographs—most recently Minkkinen, a 300-page retrospective of his career released in November 2019—and has been exhibited internationally with over 100 solo shows and nearly 200 group exhibitions in galleries and museums worldwide. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; High Museum, Atlanta; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Kiasma-Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia, Florence; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY
745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10151
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Gail Albert Halaban @ Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC - Out My Window

Gail Albert Halaban: Out My Window
Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
Through 9 August 2019

Edwynn Houk Gallery presents a solo exhibition of recent work by GAIL ALBERT HALABAN, from her ongoing series Out My Window. The show is composed of eleven photographs, selected primarily from her 2018 George Eastman Museum exhibition, many of which have never before been presented by the gallery. It features an array of international destinations from Paris to Istanbul, as well as several cities illustrated in Gail Albert Halaban’s newly published book, Italian Views, including Venice, Rome, and Naples.

Gail Albert Halaban: Italian Views

Photographs and vignettes by Gail Albert Halaban

Essay by Francine Prose

Aperture, 2019

11 ½ x 14 in. (28.6 x 35.6 cm)

128 pages, 55 four-color images

Clothbound

Out My Window originated in 2007 after Gail Albert Halaban moved to Manhattan. Fascinated by the interpersonal dynamics of urban dwelling and the unspoken social contract between neighbors who observe each other’s domestic lives through their apartment windows yet appear to be strangers in public, she anticipated experiencing the quintessential paradox of life in a densely populated metropolis- that of feeling lonely while constantly surrounded by people.

In fact, she discovered that windows could function not only as barriers, but also as bridges connecting neighbors. She began collaborating with residents across New York City, directing them within the frames of their windows as if they were actors on a stage. Although these images evoke a sense of voyeurism and the transgression of peering into the private lives of others, it was critical to the artist that all of her subjects were willing to take part. Rather than shooting from street level, she photographed the view from the window of one participant into that of another, thus recreating the intimate but removed experience of city living in her photographs, as well as introducing two neighbors in the process.

This initial endeavor sparked what has become a twelve-year project spanning cities across the globe. Gail Albert Halaban has allowed the series to evolve organically through the relationships she develops with her subjects, and the resulting bodies of work are uniquely shaped by the particular characteristics and customs of each city and its inhabitants. Each one is a story in its own right, illustrating the nuanced relationship between that city’s inhabitants and its architecture, as well as a chapter in the artist’s continuous exploration of the universal question of what it means to be part of a community.

Over the course of creating Out My Window, Gail Albert Halaban has become increasingly conscious of the importance of community building in her practice; it has become a specific intention, rather than a byproduct of her art making. The past decade has seen rapid globalization and digitalization, amplifying questions of social isolation in modern life. Gail Albert Halaban’s latest book, Italian Views, is her first to feature text from her subjects, describing their perceptions of the neighbors they have been quietly studying from afar, often for years, and the elaborate narratives they’re woven in their minds from clues gathered from their windows. By engaging in Gail Albert Halaban’s collaborative process in which neighbors meet and work together, these imagined relationships grow into real human connectivity.

GAIL ALBERT HALABAN holds an MFA in Photography from Yale University. Three monographs of her work have been published to date: Out My Window (PowerHouse, 2012), Paris Views (Aperture, 2014) and Italian Views (Aperture, 2019). Gail Albert Halaban’s photographs are in the collections of the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO; Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA; and Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS. The artist currently lives and works in New York City.

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY
745 Fifth Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10151
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Erwin Olaf: Palm Springs @ Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

Erwin Olaf: Palm Springs 

Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York 

25 April - 1 June 2019 

Edwynn Houk Gallery presents Palm Springs (2018), a new body of work by ERWIN OLAF. Made on location, Palm Springs depicts a series of enigmatic encounters with a cast of imagined characters, inspired by the celebrated history and aesthetic of the southern California city.

While set in the modern day, Palm Springs evokes the memory and visual language of the city's past, recalling its heyday as the quintessential midcentury paradise. Southern California has been mythologized as a carefree promiseland, a limitless pastiche of cerulean swimming pools and emerald lawns, a reputation preserved by iconic poolside scenes by artists such as Slim Aarons and David Hockney. Olaf's vision harnesses these themes to explore twenty-first century realities: the desire for glamor, wealth, and sex are ever present, but this world is more diverse, complicated, and introspective than before. In Olaf's new Palm Springs, young people read Lolita while sun-bathing on yellow patches of grass; workers daydream in public laundromats; families enjoy scenic picnics on rocky desertscapes; and the artist himself, drinking a dirty martini poolside, sports graying hair.

Cinematic and painterly, each scene is a perfectly staged composition, with every detail conscious and controlled, while also intimating a sense of mystery and disquiet. Dressed fashionably in immaculate homes or lounging at the pool, Olaf's subjects appear to live a beautiful life, yet each is caught in moments of palpable desire, fantasy, reflection, and tension-a reflection of Olaf's interest in the experience of the individual in an increasingly globalized world. Viewers are left to allow their imaginations to fill in the context of the scenarios and relationships captured in each photograph, as Erwin Olaf masterfully creates a sense of emotional immediacy while leaving the ambiguous storyline open to personal interpretation.

This exhibition anticipates the artist's sixtieth birthday, an occasion also being commemorated with three museum retrospectives of his work. The Gemeentemuseum and the Fotomuseum, both in The Hague, have concurrent shows on view through May 12. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has acquired 500 works spanning Erwin Ewin career for its permanent collection and will present 12 x Erwin Olaf, an exhibition featuring a selection of the artist's photographs in dialogue with Dutch Golden Age paintings, opening on July 3. A 400-page monograph, Erwin Olaf: I Am (Aperture), was also published this month.

Erwin Olaf's work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris; George Eastman Museum, Rochester; and the Sir Elton John Collection, UK and USA. The artist lives and works in Amsterdam.

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY

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August Sander @ Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC - Citizens of the Twentieth Century

August Sander: Citizens of the Twentieth Century
Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
5 April - 26 May, 2012

Edwynn Houk Gallery announces its representation of the August Sander family collection. In celebration, the gallery is presenting a retrospective look at August Sander’s career from the series Citizens of the Twentieth Century.

August Sander is widely considered to be one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century, and a master of modern photographic portraiture. He is most celebrated for his iconic Citizens of the Twentieth Century, a project that aspired to be a comprehensive inventory of the German people during the Weimar Republic, and which became his lifelong endeavor. Parts of it were first published in the volume Face of Our Time (1929). His photographs are lucid and honest portraits from every strata of that society: peasants, students, laborers, businessmen, bankers, artists, children, the disabled and the unemployed. Each finds his or her proper place within the seven portfolios into which Sander arranged his Citizens of the Twentieth Century: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artist, The City and The Last People. The project remains a moving celebration of the diversity of national life, yet for the Nazis it was far too rich and various, and it refused to conform to their narrow Aryan ideals: in 1934 they confiscated all the copies of August Sander’s books and prints that they could find, and banned him from continuing to take portraits.

August Sander remained a firm exponent of the universal language of photography as an uncensored communicator of truth and reality. A photograph, he believed, should be free of any manipulation or trickery and should serve as a true document. As he once put it, “nothing seemed to me more important than to project an image of our time with absolute fidelity to nature by means of photography.” His portraits beautifully demonstrate his meticulous sense of observation, his eye for the surrounding environment, for occupation and social class. Dress and posture and backdrop all do the work of revealing identity. For Sander, the inner essence of a human being could always be read from their outward appearance. His direct - but by no means detached - style of portraiture has been a major influence on photographers ever since, including Paul Strand, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Walker Evans, and Diane Arbus.

The exhibition consists of over forty images from Citizens of the Twentieth Century, including some of the most famous, such as Three Farmers and Pastry Chef, and the less seen images of persecuted Jews. Rare enlargement prints are also on view. This exhibition follows Houk Gallery’s Diane Arbus /August Sander exhibition last fall at the Zurich gallery.

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY
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