Category Archives: Artist Profile

Josh Azzarella

September 19, 2011 – 8:27 am
Untitled #39 (265), 20 x 30 in., 2007, Ed. 7+3 a.p.

Untitled #39 (265), 20 x 30 in., 2007, Ed. 7+3 a.p.

Artist Josh Azzarella manipulates appropriated imagery, transforming iconic images into scenes that can be alternately soothing and dispiriting. Carefully increasing, deleting or modifying existing pixels, Azzarella alters images already ingrained in the public consciousness. Scenes memorized and “known” are changed, so that the iconic becomes disembodied, the familiar becomes uncanny. Azzarella’s work alters the context and meaning of recognized imagery and questions how individual and collective memories form. The obfuscation of memories with realities and the creation of memories where none previously existed are all germane to his methodology.

Untitled #13 (AHSF), 20 x 30 in., 2006, Ed. 7+3 a.p.

Untitled #13 (AHSF), 20 x 30 in., 2006, Ed. 7+3 a.p.

Untitled #23 (Lynndied), 20 x 30 in., 2006, Ed. 7+3 a.p.

Untitled #23 (Lynndied), 20 x 30 in., 2006, Ed. 7+3 a.p.

The results are works which simultaneously discomfit and reassure. Viewers may recognize the context, but the poignant thrust of Azzarella’s source material is dematerialized. With the foreground figures removed, Untitled #39 (265) recasts the afternoon of May 4, 1970 at Kent State as an ordinary sunny day. Similarly, Hajji Ali does not appear as the notoriously hooded and electrically-wired Abu Ghraib prisoner; rather, a lonely cardboard sits near a cinder block wall in Untitled #13 (AHSF). Azzarella’s omissions emphasize the marginal details, recasting events as mundane happenings void of pathos.

Untitled #15 (Tank Man), 20 x 30 in., 2006, Ed. 7+3 a.p.

Untitled #15 (Tank Man), 20 x 30 in., 2006, Ed. 7+3 a.p.

Azzarella created a 9/11 tetralogy of sorts, whereby footage of the painful events is transformed into a more seemingly hopeful scenario. The jets do not crash; rather, they are depicted as effortlessly flying by the doomed structures in looped footage. There is no cataclysm; in effect, there is nothing to see. A fourth video depicts a “jumper,” someone who fell or leapt from the World Trade Center. This footage is slowed down, and the frame rate transition is altered so that the individual resembles a subtly shifting amorphous shape. Again, the sensational is abstracted and disaster is forestalled. Azzarella’s recasting of these defining moments speaks to the pervasive fears indicative of millennial culture, as well as the desire to assuage end-time anxieties. Specifically, our estranged relationship to time is put on display and amplified. The non-events of Azzarella’s videos, particularly his pieces concerning the World Trade Center, belie our collective longing for a singular calamity, the Apocalypse which is forever about to happen.

Untitled #9 (W.T.P.1), Om 21s, 2006, Ed. DVD 7+3 a.p.

Untitled #9 (W.T.P.1), Om 21s, 2006, Ed. DVD 7+3 a.p.

Azzarella engages our collective fears and anxieties by manipulating media imagery. In preserving the structural integrity of the World Trade Center towers, notions of time, terrorism and simulacra converge upon the most visible symbols of capitalism. The omission of fiery spectacle suggests that a late 20th century longing for a corrective to globalism, a return to Western notions of time, the desire for the real, and the compulsion to whitewash history are symptomatic of contemporary fin de siècle unease. Azzarella limns the millennial condition as intrinsic to a world of unceasing representations and irrepressible globalism.

Josh Azzarella

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Peter Happel Christian

September 15, 2011 – 11:14 am
Open Up from the series Half Wild, 2011

Open Up from the series Half Wild, 2011

The photography of Minneapolis-based artist Peter Happel Christian explores the interaction between humans and the natural environment. Christian does not merely document the landscape of the natural world; rather, he creates actions, which he documents through a wide range of media, including photographs, artist books, and sculptures. In his artist statement, he writes that he will “make a habit of literally setting his camera aside and reaching into the world to physically interact with his subject matter.”

Untitled #2 from the series Black Holes & Blind Spots, 2010

Untitled #2 from the series Black Holes & Blind Spots, 2010

Dallas Fort Worth Airport from the series Brief Notes on Existence, 2004-2006

Dallas Fort Worth Airport from the series Brief Notes on Existence, 2004-2006

Site Insight from the series Near the Point of the Beginning, 2006-2008

Site Insight from the series Near the Point of the Beginning, 2006-2008

His series Brief Notes on Existence documents the environments of different locations in an unusual and humorous way. From 2004-2006, Christian collected dust bunnies from various American settings, ranging from museums, galleries, universities, courthouses, and his home. After Christian gathered and organized each group of dust, he then created cyanotype photograms of each individual piece. The resulting 170 prints are bound into handmade artist books and organized into 28 separate volumes, one for each location. Christian’s printing process has transformed these photograms from portraits of specific places into mystery-infused miniature renderings of clouds.

Structure for Sight from the series Weights and Measurements, 2006-2009

Structure for Sight from the series Weights and Measurements, 2006-2009

Through his work, Christian explores the physicality of land as well as the historical connections that humans have to this very physicality. In Near the Point of Beginning (2006-2008), Christian, along with professional geographer Dr. Bradley Shellito, rediscovered a historical site along the Ohio River known as “The Point of the Beginning of the Seven Ranges.” It was from this point in 1785 that the rest of the United States, westward of Ohio, was surveyed and divided into the states they are today. Although a monument represents this historical event near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, the exact location of the site is unknown and only rediscovered through Christian’s completion of the piece. Like the rest of his work, the project highlights how historical events continue to shape our understanding of the built environment and natural world that surrounds us.

Peter Happel Christian

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Faith Holland

August 25, 2011 – 12:01 pm

Raised by two computer consultants, it seems only natural that Faith Holland would go digital with her photographic practice. Profile Pictures, 2010 marks one of her first explorations into the expanding realm of video art. For this work, Holland takes still images of herself and friends from Facebook, and then using Photoshop, she transforms each image by smudging and altering the faces of the subjects. In an increasingly digital age, we often reconcile our “real” self with our online persona. Holland’s work makes us question how far removed our online character is from our true identity. She views the entire process as the most compelling part of the piece, rather than the end product of the edited photograph. This progression marks the point when Holland’s computer turned into her studio.

Just as Faith Holland’s desktop has become her virtual studio space, in an ever-present “online” world, some of us now experience and explore art via the home computer. Recently, we have seen the phenomenon of the revolutionary Google Art Project, a website that allows you to virtually explore famous museums all across the world. The program enables the user to zoom in on revered masterpieces to outrageous levels of detail. Holland’s piece, Another Way of Seeing (Starry Night), 2011 comments on this new and unnatural way of viewing art. She contends that this artificial method of art spectatorship reduces painting to a time-based medium, as the viewer now sees the work piece by piece through the technological lens of scrolling and page loading.

Faith Holland, originally from New York, graduated from Vassar College with honors in Media Studies. She is an M.F.A. candidate at the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she studies photography, video, and related media. She lives and works in New York City.

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Andreas Gefeller

August 18, 2011 – 11:55 am
Untitled (Academy of Arts, R 209) from the Supervisions Series, 2009, 110 x 88 cm

Untitled (Academy of Arts, R 209) from the Supervisions Series, 2009, 110 x 88 cm

Andreas Gefeller is a German photographer who first received recognition with his Supervisions series (2004-2009). In this series, Gefeller takes several photographs of one perspective from high vantage points—sometimes up to six or seven meters above the ground with his camera aimed directly downward. He then digitally assembles the photographs into a single image, creating a surreal and almost inhuman view of the ground below. Gefeller eliminates perspective through this method of assemblage, and as a result, the photographs appear incredibly flat, sharing visual commonalities with architectural blueprints rather than with aerial photography.

Untitled (Beach) from the Supervisions Series, 2006, 148 x 201 cm

Untitled (Beach) from the Supervisions Series, 2006, 148 x 201 cm

The sites that Gefeller photographs in Supervisions— namely, artists’ studios and parking lots— gesture towards human interaction with different environments without every directly showing individual human characters.

Untitled (Tree) From the Supervisions Series, 2007, 180 x 129.5 cm

Untitled (Tree) From the Supervisions Series, 2007, 180 x 129.5 cm

Gefeller approaches this series unlike some of his German contemporaries, such as Andreas Gursky, whose work depicts similar subjects on a similarly grand scale. Whereas Gursky seamlessly reconstructs scenes using technology, Gefeller often purposefully makes the digital post-production evident to the viewer through formal characteristics of his work.

Poles 44 from the Japan Series, 2010, 100 x 100 cm

Poles 44 from the Japan Series, 2010, 100 x 100 cm

The Japan Series, Gefeller’s latest body of work, debuted at Hasted Kraeutler in New York this past April as a part of the European Eyes on Japan/Japan Photography Today project, which depicts the complex constructed power lines around major cities in Japan. Photographed against black or white skies, these nearly monochromatic pictures eliminate the context of their environment and enhance the minimalist aesthetic value of these man-made constructions.

Untitled (Plant and Pergola), from the Japan Series, 2010, 60 x 180 cm

Untitled (Plant and Pergola), from the Japan Series, 2010, 60 x 180 cm

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Julian Röder

August 10, 2011 – 7:31 am
Protests against G8 Summit in Evian, (at the road blockade of the "Route Nationale", near Evian), France, 2003

Protests against G8 Summit in Evian, (at the road blockade of the "Route Nationale", near Evian), France, 2003

Julian Röder produces very sharp, astute images of engaging moments that are both politically charged and eloquently situational. Röder has focused several of his photography projects on the various critics of globalization. When protests ensue at the summit meetings of the EU and G8 country’s security zone borders, Röder sets his sights. In 2001 in Genoa, Röder and some of his friends were among the demonstrators, stealthily documenting their way through the secured city in a luggage van. His photographs are poignantly current and very topical—the tension is ever-present, not historical or reminiscent. Röder leads the viewer by the hand and throat through precarious events as a spectator and as a participant, dangerously close and hyperaware.

Röder sets his scope on the protagonist, the delicate measure of protest and change. The events are crisp and lucid, yet the oppositional sides blur. The cause and effect become one, as if the behavior of revolt is unflinchingly natural and common. Protest becomes the norm, he is directing and informing us of several secrets at once, secrets intensely lit, both perilous and covert. He succinctly shows us how we must all stand up, perhaps we, too, should behave in this way in order to learn and grow—to instill the actual change and progress desperately needed in contemporary society.

Among the most successful aspects of Röder’s work is the way he remains impartial to the sides he presents. He beckons you to the eye of the storm, the erupting center of the tumultuous events before you and asks you to think before you leap, or possibly just leap and see what might happen—a brisk push in an uncertain direction, a fate and political end yet to be discovered.

Demonstration against a march of the right-wing extremist NPD-party, 2001, Berlin, Germany

Demonstration against a march of the right-wing extremist NPD-party, 2001, Berlin, Germany

Protests against G8 summit in Gleneagles, near the summit site, Scotland, 2005

Protests against G8 Summit in Gleneagles, near the summit site, Scotland, 2005

Protests against G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, 2001

Protests against G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, 2001

Protests against G8 summit in Evian, (at the road blockade of the "Route Nationale", near Evian), France, 2003

Protests against G8 Summit in Evian, (at the road blockade of the "Route Nationale", near Evian), France, 2003

Born 1981 in Erfurt, Julian Röder grew up in Berlin. After apprenticing as a photographer at the agency OSTKREUZ he studied photography at the School of Visual Arts in Leipzig. In 2009, he graduated with a diploma at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. Since 2001, he has been at work on a long-term documentation project called The Summits, which depicts protests at the edges of the security zones of state summits. For his latest project World of Warfare, Röder traveled to Abu Dhabi to visit the largest arms fair in the middle east. He lives in Berlin.

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