“Mystic River”
September 8 - October 22, 2006
Dike Blair, Peter Coffin, Ian Hundley, Martha Friedman, Matt Keegan, Emily Manzo, Heather Rowe, Stephen Shore, Paul Wagner, and Roger White
Curated by Noah Sheldon with music by David Griffin, Casey Farnum, Koen Hotlkamp, Emily Manzo, Warren Ng, and Roger White
OPENING EVENT
Tuesday, October 10 at 7 p.m.
Stiteler Auditorium, Murphy Hall
Stephen Shore in conversation with Noah Sheldon and Roger White
Opening reception and live musical performances by participating artists
immediately following in the gallery, 8-9 p.m.
About the Show
In 2005, Noah Sheldon and Roger White interviewed acclaimed American photographer Stephen Shore for The Brooklyn Rail. Their conversation led Sheldon to imagine an exhibition based on the spirit of Shore's photographs, in particular, a work entitled Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979. Depicting a group of people camped out on a riverbank, the image becomes the touchstone for a group exhibition of drawings, sculptural installations, paintings, quilted fabric, and works on paper loosely united by their link to Shore's vision of the everyday, ecstatic landscape. The smallest piece in the show is a video shot in extreme close-up across the surface of Shore's print accompanied by four commissioned soundtracks that lend different emotional valiances to the video's quasi-documentary discovery of tiny photographic moments. Writing in the New York Times about the exhibition, which was first presented in May 2006 at Southfirst: Art (Brooklyn, NY), critic Holland Cotter celebrated the show as "lyrical" and "not quite of this world."
Stephen Shore (born 1947)—along with William
Eggleston—is
regarded as one of the central figures of 1970s color photography. Building
on approaches developed in black and white by Walker Evans, Robert Frank,
and Gary Winogrand, Shore is now esteemed as a pioneer whose influence
can be seen in the work of 80s artists such as Andreas Gursky and Thomas
Struth, among many others. The first living photographer to have a one-man
show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he not only helped spark new
interest in color photography but also in the use of the view camera
for documentary work. His work from the 1970s has recently enjoyed fresh
attention from international critics and audiences alike. Last winter, "American
Surfaces," an exhibition of 250 photographs taken across the country
in 1972 and 1973, was presented at PS1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA,
Long Island, Queens. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim
Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, since 1982 Shore
has been the director of the Photography Program at Bard College. For
the public presentation at Arcadia on October 10, he will discuss his
work and the exhibition it inspired with its curator, artist Noah Sheldon,
and participating artist and critic Roger White.
Illustrated catalog, including the original Brooklyn Rail conversation
between Shore, Sheldon and White along with texts by White, Dike Blair,
and Maika Pollack available.
Stephen Shore, Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979, 1979–2006. C-print, 36 x 45 in. Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York
Links
- Selected views of "Mystic River" installed at Southfirst: Art, Brooklyn, NY, Spring 2006
- Conversation with Stephen Shore, exhibition curator Noah Sheldon and participating artist Roger White published in The Brooklyn Rail (2005)
- “Mystic River” Postcard Advertisement
Reviews
- Philadelphia Inquirer (scroll down to "Stephen Shore, admirers")