Zachary Bako

Bookmark and Share
By Editor in Art on February 17th, 2010 | No Comments »

Zachary BakoWe sent New York photographer Zachary Bako – a friend of a friend — to shoot backstage last Friday at the Robert Geller Fall/Winter 2010 show. In case you missed his photos, click here. They’re amazing.

In addition to the link we gave him on that post, we wanted to do a post on Bako because we’re so into his photos, especially the SPECIMINS: from series. We would have used one of them for the image above, but the dimensions didn’t work and we didn’t want to crop anything off, because without everything, they lose a bit of their power.

Says Bako of his work: My objective is to explore my surroundings and create an adaptation of the world around me onto paper. Photography has allowed me to create new structures and creatures out of existing objects. Constantly observing the environment, my surroundings tend to get stale over time. By creating new visual specimens, I am replacing the ordinary world with a dynamic new species of imagery.

(more…)

Alex Prager | Week-end

Bookmark and Share
By Editor in Art on February 8th, 2010 | No Comments »

Alex Prager BarbaraIf you’re in New York, stop by Yancey Richardson Gallery and check out Week-end, an exhibition of new work by Alex Prager and the third installment in the photographic trilogy of staged female portraits by the Los Angeles-based artist.

Simultaneous with this show in New York, Week-end will be shown at the M + B Gallery in Los Angeles.

Through her constructed narratives and dramatic portraits, Prager explores a range of female types from vulnerable to powerful, from tragic to tender and from coolly detached to literally playing with fire. Prager’s photographs are inspired by and set in her native city of Los Angeles, a place the artist describes as “A strange picture of perfection…with a sense of unease under the surface of all this beauty and promise.”

(more…)

MoMA | New Photography 2009

Bookmark and Share
By admin in Art on September 12th, 2009 | No Comments »

A bigger, better versioin of MoMA’s annual New Photography opens on 09.30.09. Don’t miss it.

Each fall, the exhibition has presented significant bodies of contemporary work of two to four artists. This year, New Photography has expanded to highlight the work of six artists, with some 20 works of photography.

New Photography 2009 is a thematic presentation of significant recent work in photography that examines and expands the conventional definitions of the medium.

Since its inception in 1985, the New Photography series has introduced the work of over 68 artists from 15 countries. The series continues to highlight the Museum’s commitment to the work of less familiar artists and seeks to represent the most interesting accomplishments in contemporary photography. New Photography has featured such influential artists as Robin Rhode (2005), Olafur Eliasson (1998), Rineke Dijkstra (1997), Thomas Demand (1996), and Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1986), among many others.

Although each artist in the exhibition represents different working methods and pictorial modes ranging from abstract to representational, their pictures all begin in the studio or the darkroom and result from processes involving collection, assembly, and manipulation. Many of the works are made with everyday materials and objects, and use images culled from the Internet, magazines, newspapers, and books. In addition, most of these artists are active in other disciplines, and their photographs relate to drawing, sculpture, video, and installation.

(more…)