Karl Lagerfeld: Farewell to Daylight, Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC

Karl Lagerfeld: Farewell to Daylight
Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
May 18 — June 17, 2006

Pace/MacGill Gallery presents "Farewell to Daylight," Karl Lagerfeld's first exhibition of photographs in the United States. The show features over twenty 16 x 20-inch gelatin silver prints as well as a selection of digital pigment and Fresson color prints (2006). His photographs, taken in Paris after the sun has set, transcend simple descriptions of place and capture the emotional dimensions and ethereal qualities of one of the world's most enchanting and legendary cities.

In addition to his career as a fashion designer, Karl Lagerfeld began working as a photographer in 1987. Among his many talents is his innate skill with the camera. Karl Lagerfeld understands the medium and what it can accomplish and is able to make photographs that are sensitive reflections of his thoughts and feelings. The exhibition reveals Karl Lagerfeld’s singular views of the Paris he experiences during his nocturnal strolls through the city’s streets and along the Seine. Drawn to Parisian scenery and architecture, Karl Lagerfeld explores the cityscape as well as the alluring qualities of the night atmosphere. Landmarks become abstracted; porticoes recede into infinite shadow and columns appear as intangible, luminous pillars of light. As a photographer, he embraces the technical challenges posed by difficult light conditions; all of Karl Lagerfeld’s pictures were shot during the limited hours between dusk and nightfall. Working in the tradition of Brassai - who famously chronicled the city in the monograph Paris By Night (1933) - Karl Lagerfeld creates a modern portrait of nighttime in the “City of Light.”

Karl Lagerfeld was born in 1938 in Hamburg. He is the recipient of the Lucky Strike Design Award from the Raymond Loewy Foundation (1993) and the cultural prize from the German Photographic Society (1996). In 1998 he founded the Lagerfeld Gallery in Paris. Monographs of Karl Lagerfeld’s photography include Waterdance/Bodywave (2002), Aktstrakt (2003), and A Portrait of Dorian Gray (2004), among others. Steidl has published the majority of his books.

Karl Lagerfeld lives and works in Paris and New York City.

PACE/MACGILL GALLERY
32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022
www.pacemacgill.com

John Szarkowski, Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC

John Szarkowski: Now 

Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York 

January 19 - February 18, 2006 

I don’t have a schedule. I just take my camera outside. Some days I go to the pond and some days I don’t. Some days I look at the apple trees, and some days I find other things. I love it even more now, because these are my trees. 

- John Szarkowski 

Vanity Fair, January 2005 

Pace/MacGill Gallery presents an exhibition of recent photographs by JOHN SZARKOWSKI. Comprised of single, gelatin silver prints and a large multi-part work consisting of twelve 11 x 14 inch photographs, the exhibition elaborates upon John Szarkowski’s ongoing exploration of the American landscape with a special emphasis on trees. Taken during his travels around the country and on everyday meanders near his home in upstate New York, John Szarkowski’s photographs are careful studies of the natural world that surrounds him. Whether capturing the monumental glory of the primeval redwoods populating Rockefeller Forest in California’s Humboldt State Park or a generous tangle of branches on a favorite backyard Tomkins County King apple tree, John Szarkowski’s photographs emote a lyricism grounded in an awareness of time and place. John Szarkowski’s newest multi-part work, “Graft,” provides twelve different views of grafts he has undertaken between varieties of apple trees. Images include supple branches extending Shiva-like from a sturdy trunk and the triumphant emergence of new buds. His pictures are observations and documentations of the continuum innate to nature - life and death – and they ultimately pay homage to its remarkable and regenerative power.

Pace/MacGill’s exhibition coincides with the traveling retrospective “John Szarkowski: Photographs” on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from February 1 through May 15, 2006. The exhibition was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and opened there in February 2005. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will be the final venue for the retrospective (June 18 through September 10, 2006). 

JOHN SZARKOWSKI (b. 1925, Ashland, Wisc.) attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison and received his undergraduate degree in the History of Art. Soon after his graduation, John Szarkowski joined the staff of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis where he was hired as the museum photographer (1948-51). He had his first solo show there in 1949 and other one-person exhibitions promptly followed. He quickly established a strong reputation as a practicing photographer and continued in that direction for over a decade. During that time the monographs The Idea of Louis Sullivan (1956) and The Face of Minnesota (1958) were published. Appearing on the New York Times best-seller list for eight weeks, The Face of Minnesota was reprinted in 1964.

In 1962 John Szarkowski was chosen to succeed legendary curator Edward Steichen as the Director of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. During his nearly 30-year tenure in that post, John Szarkowski expanded upon the major accomplishments of his predecessor, giving solo exhibitions to Andre Kertesz, J.H. Lartigue, and Diane Arbus, among others. Unanimously acknowledged for his curatorial vision and articulate advocacy of the photographic medium, John Szarkowski authored numerous books and catalogs while establishing one of the most comprehensive collections of photography in the world. Following his 1991 retirement from MoMA, John Szarkowski resumed work as a photographer. Recent monographs include Mr. Bristol’s Barn: With Excerpts from Mr. Blinn’s Diary (1997), and John Szarkowski: Photographs (2005).

John Szarkowski’s work can be found in numerous collections, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Princeton University Art Museum, N.J.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. 

PACE/MACGILL GALLERY

32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022

www.pacemacgill.com

Duane Michals, Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC - The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy & Ukiyo-e: Pictures from the Floating World

Duanes Michals:

The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy

Ukiyo-e: Pictures from the Floating World

Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

November 17, 2005 - January 14, 2006

Pace/MacGill Gallery presents an exhibition featuring two new bodies of work, “The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy” and “Ukiyo-e: Pictures from the Floating World,” by DUANE MICHALS. The “Cavafy” series (2003-05) is comprised of multiple picture sequences; each sequence includes, on average, ten gelatin silver prints measuring 5 x 7 inches with hand written text. Inspired by the writings of Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933), the series depicts fictitious scenes from Cavafy’s life as imagined by Duane Michals. Michals’s friend, actor Joel Grey, is cast as Cavafy. Also on view for the first time are pictures from the series “Ukiyo-e: Pictures From the Floating World” (2005). Composed of single, 11 x 14 inch chromogenic photographs, the series explores what Duane Michals describes as “the real world of appearances in which we live” and reflects the aesthetic and philosophical spirit of traditional Japanese prints. Adjacent to the photographs Duane Michals has written epigrammatic prose and poems to accompany the images.

Rather than illustrating Cavafy’s poems, Duane Michals adopts a writer’s role and authors visual stories and text about Cavafy himself. Duane Michals’s sequences depict the unfolding of moments or events in which the poet is envisioned to participate. Duane Michals’s own identification with Cavafy adds a personal dimension to an already intimate body of work: the “Cavafy” series explores religion, friendship, the creative process, and erotic desire. This is Duane Michals’s second series to focus on Cavafy as a subject; his first was “Homage to Cavafy” (1978). Although he has previously used color film for commercial projects, “Ukiyo-e: Pictures from the Floating World” marks the first occasion that Duane Michals has used color in his private work. Images from this series describe discrete moments with the powerful brevity of Japanese haiku: a bird is freed from its cage, a man plays cards, a sudden breeze passes, a flower blossoms, an actor becomes sad. 

DUANE MICHALS (b. 1932, McKeesport, Pa.) received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953 and worked as a graphic designer until his involvement with photography deepened in the late 1950s. Duane Michals made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Comprised of single, small-scale gelatin silver prints, each sequence depicts the unfolding of an event or reveals various perspectives on a specific subject. Duane Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his single and multipart works. Mixing fragility with strength, gravity with humor, and the mundane with the unexpected, Duane Michals’s work touches upon universal themes such as love, desire, memory, death, and immortality.

Over the past four decades, Duane Michals’s work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, hosted Duane Michals’s first solo exhibition (1970), and a year later the George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y., mounted another (1971). More recently, he has had one-person shows at the Odakyu Museum, Tokyo (1999), and the National Gallery of Canada, Ontario (2000). In 2005 his photographs were featured in “Big Bang: Destruction and Creation in Art of the 21st Century,” at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and “Recent Acquisitions: Some Versions of the Portrait” at the International Center of Photography, New York.

In recognition of his contributions to photography, Duane Michals has been honored with a CAPS Grant (1975), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1976), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Art (1989),and the Foto España International Award (2001). Duane Michals is also an officer of the Order of Arts and Letters, an award bestowed by the French Government in 1993.

Duane Michals's work belongs to numerous permanent collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His archive is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. 

PACE/MACGILL GALLERY

32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022

www.pacemacgill.com