Len Jenshel and Diane Cook Photographs On View at Joseph Bellows Gallery

 

ON ICE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEN JENSHEL AND DIANE COOK

at Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, CA

" Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but
more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of this and that
Vanished."
                       W.B. Yeats, from The Cold Heaven

 

" In 1997, on a flight home from Europe, the clouds parted and from 35,00 feet we saw Greenland for the first time. This immense frozen island that we saw from on high was mesmerizing. A few months later we made our way back to Greenland and began photographing in an unfamiliar and treacherous landscape, but one, nonetheless, possessed with a disarming beauty.

One of the threads that runs through our various projects is photographing places of astonishment and wonder. We returned many times to the polar regions to work amongst the ice - in all its forms, from imposing cathedrals of ice to their shattered remains. Sadly, over the years, each successive trip has revealed an accelerated rate of melting. For us, this project is a meditation on beauty and impermanence, in the age of global warming. " -- Len Jenshel and Diane Cook.

 

Joseph Bellows Gallery presents ON ICE: Photographs by Len Jenshel and Diane Cook. The exhibition will be on view through February 13, 2010.

Diane Cook and Len Jenshel are two of America's foremost landscape photographers, interpreting culture and environment for over twenty-five years. They met in 1979, were married in 1983, and began collaborating in 1991 using a unique style of pairing black and white prints by Cook with color images by Jenshel. The photographers are drawn to photographing places of astonishment and wonder, and their series On Ice is a sumptuous look at Greenland's glaciers and icebergs.

In 1997, on a flight home from Europe, the clouds parted and from 35,000 feet Diane Cook and Len Jenshel saw Greenland for the first time. The immense frozen island that they saw from on high was mesmerizing. A few months later the photographers traveled to Greenland and began photographing in an unfamiliar and treacherous landscape, but one, nonetheless, possessed with a disarming beauty. Over the next few years they returned many times to the polar regions to photograph the icy landscape in all its forms, from imposing cathedrals of ice to their shattered remains. Each successive trip has revealed an accelerated rate of melting. The series On Ice is a meditation on beauty and impermanence in the age of climate change.

 

LEN JENSHEL  is one of the pioneers of "The New Color," photographing landscape and culture since 1974. His books include Travels in the American West (Smithsonian, 1992), and Charmed Places (Abrams, 1988). He has received numerous grants including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts, two from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Graham Foundation, and the Design Trust for Public Space.

DIANE COOK had been photographing the complexity of landscape since her graduation from Rutgers University in 1976. Ms. Cook has been a recipient of two New York State Council on the Arts grants and a Photo Urbanism grant from the Design Trust for Public Space in 2002. Diane Cook and Len Jenshel have collaborated on two books - Hot Spots: America's Volcanic Landscape (Bulfinch Press, 1996) and Aquarium (Aperture, 2003 – Aquarium exhibition at the Kopeikin Gallery, West Hollywood, January 10 -  February 8, 2004). Their work is in numerous public and private collections worldwide. They currently live and work in New York City.

 

ON ICE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEN JENSHEL AND DIANE COOK
December 12, 2009 - February 13, 2010

Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girard Avenue
La Jolla, CA 92037

josephbellows.com

Len Jenshel and Diane Cook, Aquarium, Photographs at Paul Kopeikin Gallery

 

  Aquarium, Photographs by Diane Cooks and Len Jenshel
  © Diane Cooks, Len Jenshel / Aperture, New York

 

The PAUL KOPEIKIN GALLERY presents AQUARIUM, an exhibition by acclaimed photographers LEN JENSHEL and DIANE COOK . This exhibition coincides with the publication of their book Aquarium published by Aperture books. 

For the past quarter century Len Jenshel and Diane Cook have been involved with the appearance and perception of landscape, most notably the juncture between nature and culture. In the interior world of public aquariums their concerns shifted slightly to include the topography of the fantastic and the artificial. Aquatic displays provide the viewer with a window into a mysterious world of wonderment that we do not encounter in our daily lives. There is the fascination of the need for humans to collect and contain, but also the impulse to neatly package nature.

Len Jenshel and Diane Cook are intrigued by boundaries. There is, of course, the literal boundary of plexiglas that separates the pleasures and terrors on the inside of the tank from the security and comfort outside; at least that’s how we see it (a fish out of water may have a different point of view). There is also the metaphoric boundary where the glass is the curtain, the aquarium a theater and the drama is acted on both sides of the proscenium. The third boundary is the most important to the artists; the blurring of the boundaries between the real, the unreal, and the ideal.

As artists Len Jenshel and Diane Cook work intuitively, stay attuned to possibilities and collaborate with chance. In addition, they work with one another. But what sets their collaboration apart is that Jenshel’s vision is color while Cook’s is black and white. This counterpoint produces a unique dialogue; sometimes harmonious, sometimes jarring, and sometimes humorous. It’s a collaboration that accentuates the contrasts between description and abstraction, reality and artifice, truth and fiction.

Signed copies of Len Jenshel and Diane Cook's book, Aquarium, are available.

 

January 10 -  February 8, 2004

Kopeikin Gallery
8810 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA. 90069

 

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