Anders Petersen, Marvelli Gallery, NYC - Close Distance

Anders Petersen: Close Distance

Marvelli Gallery, New York

November 23, 2004 - January 31, 2005

Marvelli Gallery presents the first comprehensive exhibition of important Swedish photographer Anders Petersen in the United States. Anders Petersen exhibit an installation from the book Close Distance (2002) together with prints from the book Nobody Has Seen Everything (1995). In the back room there is a selection of rare vintage prints from the book Café Lehmitz (1978).

Café Lehmitz, the title of Anders Petersen’s first book, is a tavern in Hamburg where the photographer spent time at the end of the sixties. Petersen frequented this bar in which all conventions are suspended, and in which a raw life, full of humor and despair, takes place: a rough place and a kind of home at the same time. Café Lehmitz is a blunt, merciless book about life outside the bourgeoisie, in the windswept, unprotected zone where the only thing that counts is who someone really is.

Several books followed Café Lehmitz: among them, Nobody Has Seen Everything (1995), a book about about people in a psychiatric clinic. In collaboration with individual patients, Anders Petersen  staged scenes about the lost and abysmal aspects of existence in which depression and euphoria both have their place.

More recently, in the book Close Distance, Anders Petersen’s work has developed increasingly into a diary. His photographs reveal his close proximity to people, his “hypnotic intimacy” with them. These are not pictures of safe, balanced people, but images of compulsion, longing, aggression and sexuality, with the laughter and tears of despair.

A key figure of European photography, Anders Petersen is a photographer emblematic of a type of social photography where the total involvement of the author with his subject makes a militant work. Petersen aims to show the hidden aspects of human nature. Anders Petersen’s work belongs in the ranks of Ed van der Elsken, Nan Goldin and Daido Moriyama.

ANDERS PETERSEN

Born in Stockholm in 1944, Anders Petersen trained with famous Swedish photographer Christer Stromholm and then carried on his studies at the Cinema University and at the Dramatiska Institute in Stockholm between 1973 and 1974. In 1978, the publication of Café Lehmitz, marked the beginning of his carreer. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in Antwerp, Arles, Evry, Gothenborg, Hamburg, Helsinki, Herten, Istanbul, Karlsruhe, Karlstad, London, Malmo, Nancy, Nice, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm, Turin and other places. He has participated in many group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He has published several books, among them: Café Lehmitz (Shirmer/Mosel, Munich, 1978); Fangelse (Prison) (Norstedts, 1984); Ragang till Karleken (Boundary to Love) (Norstedts, 1991); Ingen Har Sett Allt (Nobody Has Seen Everything) (Legus, 1995); Anders Petersen - Photographs 1966-96 (Journal, Stokholm, 1997); Du Mich Auch (Journal, Stokholm, 2002); Close Distance (Journal Stockholm, 2002); Ich Dich Lieben, Du Mich Auch (Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2002). His work is included in important public collections, such as: Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg; Bibliotheque National, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Det Nationale Fotomuseum, Copenhagen; among others.

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com

Argentinean artist Marcelo Pombo, Marvelli Gallery, New York

Marcelo Pombo: New Paintings

Marvelli Gallery, New York

March 27 - April 26, 2003

Marvelli Gallery presents the first New York exhibition of Argentinean artist Marcelo Pombo. This painter is part of a generation of Latin American artists exploring new forms of painting through a Surrealist inspired vocabulary. The exhibition features new paintings that suggest fantastic landscapes, cellular structures and geometric abstractions.

Marcelo Pombo’s paintings are at once primitive, romantic and extremely expressive. The images are built with layers of drips and liquid paint that skip across fields of color suggesting exploding fireworks and geometric abstractions. However, a close examination reveals that nothing in Marcelo Pombo's environment exists by accident. Each panel consists of thousands of tiny droplets of paint gently laid on top of each other to form target-like configurations. Combining visual richness with wide interpretative possibility, Marcelo Pombo employs impeccable craftsmanship and an understanding of the sensuality of his materials.

Marcelo Pombo is a prominent figure in contemporary South American art. He has exhibited at many museums and cultural centers in South America, as well as with the traveling show Space of Time, organized by the Americas Society in New York. His work has also been traveling in the USA and Colombia with Amnesia, a group exhibition of contemporary Latin American art.

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com

Hans Bellmer - Vintage Prints, Marvelli Gallery, NYC

Hans Bellmer: Vintage Prints 

Marvelli Gallery, New York

February 13 - March 22, 2003

Marvelli Gallery presents an exhibition of vintage prints by German artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975). Continuing the exploration of the influence of Bellmer's photographs on contemporary art - begun with the show Negative Spaces and further investigated in Desiring Machines curated by Marcello Marvelli and Helaine Posner at Dorsky Gallery, Marvelli Gallery now exhibits a rare group of vintage prints from the years 1934-1949.

Traditionally associated with surrealism, Hans Bellmer is emerging as one of the 20th Century's most influential artists. Bellmer's photographs of dolls are eccentric masterpieces of emotional intensity and formal sophistication that provide a clear precedent for Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman and for a generation of younger photographers such as Anna Gaskell and Annika Von Hausswolff, among many.

Hans Bellmer's work is very complex not only in its layers of meaning and possible psychoanalytic interpretations, but also in its emotional intensity, achieved by expressionistic lighting and unusual framing that create a morbid and suspended atmosphere. Feelings of desire are projected onto the body of the doll in a way that remains controversial and disturbing today. the doll also evokes emotions of entrapment, loneliness, loss and sexual desire as well as vulnerability and nostalgia, and triggers unexpected emotions of empathy in the viewer.

Hans Bellmer's photographs have recently been exhibited at a retrospective held at the International Center of Photography in New York and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the exhibition Surrealism: Desire Unbound.

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com

Ingar Krauss, Marvelli Gallery, New York - The Cat's Eye

Ingar Krauss: The Cat's Eye

Marvelli Gallery, New York

February 13 - March 22, 2003

Marvelli Gallery presents The Cat's Eye, the first New York exhibition of German photographer Ingar Krauss. In this show, he presents a series of b&w photographs portraying peculiar girls and boys moving in the fragile space between reality and dream, childhood and adulthood, the inner and the outer world.

With sensitivity and intuition, Ingar Krauss creates portraits of children suspended between sadness and sensuality, vulnerability and mystery. The images of these uncanny children are charged with psychological intensity. Choosing children who grew up in marginal areas, far from homogenizing metropolitan contexts, Ingar Krauss focuses on their psychological features: absorbed in themselves, melancholically dreaming, tentatively sensual, naturally serious and sad. These children's psychological poignancy is almost a challenge to the viewer. The carefully chosen backgrounds enhance the complexity of these portraits: from floral wallpaper to dry institutional settings, from mysterious rooms to moody outdoor environments. In these formally striking pictures, Ingar Krauss carefully modulates light and composition in order to achieve a balance between subject and surroundings.

A self-taught photographer, Ingar Krauss has only recently started to exhibit his photographs, gaining immediate recognition. His work has been exhibited in Berlin, at the National Portrait Gallery in London and at Kunsthalles in Erfurt and Speyer, Germany.

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com 

Yuichi Hibi, Marvelli Gallery, New York - Zero Hour - Photography Exhibition

Yuichi Hibi: Zero Hour

Marvelli Gallery, New York

November 27 - December 30, 2002

Marvelli Gallery presents Zero Hour, the second solo show at the gallery of Japanese photographer and filmmaker Yuichi Hibi. This exhibition features thirteen new black and white photographs shot entirely at night with no additional lighting other than natural, and without any creative arrangements or props.

With Zero Hour, Yuichi Hibi continues the exploration of his bleak and stylized cinema-noir vision with a more dramatic edge to his moving high-contrast set pieces. Devoid of people, these cinematic photographs portray the dark, airless romantic reality which is at the center of Hibi's imaginative gaze. In his compositions stingy moments of light act as an emotional climax within the confines of an urban nightmare.

Yuichi Hibi, who has developed an enthusiastic cult following in New York and Tokyo, graduated from Tokyo's famed Nikkatsu School in 1985. In 1986, Hibi joined Japan's highly-acclaimed theater group Bungaku-za, where he performed in many productions of classic works of drama. His directing career began with an intimate portrait of photographer Robert Frank at his home in Nova Scotia. Yuichi Hibi's most recent film, "Unveiled", will appear at film festivals worldwide in 2003. 

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com

Aimee Beaubien, Marvelli Gallery, New York

Aimee Beaubien

Marvelli Gallery, New York

May 30 - June 30, 2002

Marvelli Gallery presents the first New York exhibition of Chicago artist Aimee Beaubien. In this debut show, she presents a series of new gelatin silver print photocollages, in which discrete female body parts kaleidoscope against dreamy-hued color fields.

Stacked, tangled or interlocking, the repeating torsos and limbs create complex forms that acknowledge their formal antecedents in H. Bellmer's idiosyncratic pupees and E.Weston's modernist photographs. Aimee Beaubien's manipulation of such surrealist strategies emancipates the female nude from the oppression of the male gaze while it pays homage to modernist experimentation.

Resolutely low-tech, the artist makes evident the hand cut lines in her prints and leaves the contours of her compositions ragged, creating a discomforting tension between the sharpness of the edges and the sinuous roundness of the interlocking female bodies.

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com

Andrea Frank, Marvelli Gallery, NYC - Beloved Child Exhibition

Andrea Frank: Beloved Child 

Marvelli Gallery, New York 

April 11 - May 25, 2002 

Marvelli Gallery presents Beloved Child, the second solo exhibition at the gallery of German artist Andrea Frank. In this show, she presents a series of new photographs.

The series Beloved Child is based on archive images dating from the 1930s to 70s, which were altered in the re-shooting and printing process. The series focuses on children¹s group activities such as sports, playing games, or life in vacation camps, emphasizing the role of society as a forming and educating force. Sports, play, and games are ways to learn rules and social behavior. The emotionally charged images suggest a fine line between education on the one side and manipulation or ideological molding on the other side. While this social manipulation is explicit in some images, others are more ambiguous and open to individual interpretation. Still, they all expose the same vulnerability and insecurity, which are part of every childhood, acting as "internal mirrors" and evoking memories of our own history and upbringing.

For the artist, archive images represent the database of a visual collective memory and history, as well as a bridge to personal memories. Here, the collective process of re-examining these emotionally charged and dense images from our history can be seen analogous to an individual's re-visiting of his or her childhood experiences in psychotherapy.

The pictures are cropped and manipulated in the darkroom by the artist. Through extended exposure times and subtle color shifts, details fuse to form dense corporeal masses, and the image surface acquires a painterly quality.

In her work, Andrea Frank has explored Europe¹s totalitarian past and its influence on the present times. She is a graduate of Parsons (MFA) and the Whitney Independent Study Program, NYC. In recent solo exhibitions at Marvelli Gallery in New York and Gambalunga Museum in Italy, her large photographs focused on the relationship between history, ideology and architecture.

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com