Ori
Gersht Places That Were Not
13 January - 27 February 2010 Private View:
Tuesday 12 January, 6–8pm |
Mummery + Schnelle is pleased to announce an exhibition of a
new body of work by Ori Gersht entitled Time after Time.
In this series of photographs and films, Gersht explores questions
concerning optical perception, the conception of time and the
relationships between the photographic image and objective reality.
The exhibition will focus on a group of newly completed large-scale
photographs entitled Blow Up. These depict elaborate
floral arrangements, based upon a 19th Century still-life painting
by Henri Fantin-Latour, captured in the moment of exploding.
Gersht´s compositions are literally frozen in motion,
a process dependent on the ability of the advanced technology
of photography to freeze-frame action, something inconceivable
to the Old Masters. This visual occurrence, that is too fast
for the human eye to process and can only be perceived with
the aid of photography, is what Walter Benjamin called the ‘optical
unconsciousness’ in his seminal essay ‘A Short History
of Photography’.
The latest digital technology has enabled Gersht to create contemporary
versions of frozen life, bringing the concerns of Fantin-Latour
and other still-life masters into a contemporary context. His
photographs echo the appearance of oil paintings and allude
to the inherent shadow of death and decay hanging over traditional
still-life and vanitas painting. Yet they are distanced from
them due to the instantaneous digital process employed, which
captures each shattering still-life at a speed of 1/6000 of
a second and stores the information immaterially as data on
a hard drive until each is fabricated as a Light Jet print,
returning the image to the material realm of two-dimensional
artworks.
Flowers, which often symbolise peace, become victims of brutal
terror, revealing an uneasy beauty in destruction. This tension
that exists between violence and beauty, destruction and creation
is enhanced by the fruitful collision of the age-old need to
capture “reality” and the potential of photography
to question what that actually means. The authority of photography
in relation to objective truth has been shattered, but new possibilities
to experience reality in a more complex and challenging manner
have arisen.
Ori Gersht was born in Tel Aviv in 1967 and studied at the Royal
College of Art in London. He has exhibited internationally since
1999. Solo exhibitions include ‘Afterglow’ at the
Art Now room at Tate Britain, an expanded version of the same
exhibition at the Helena Rubenstein Pavilion for Contemporary
Art, Tel Aviv Museum, both in 2002 and ‘The Clearing’
at the Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2005/06. Recent
Group exhibitions include ‘In Focus: Living History’
at Tate Modern in 2007, ‘Twilight: Photography in the
Magic Hour’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum London
and ‘Inside-Out, Contemporary Artists from Israel’
at MARCO, Vigo, Spain both in 2006. |
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Back to exhibitions

On Reflection
2014
Places That Were Not
2010
Time After Time
2008
Click here to download a press release in pdf form
Please scroll down for installation views
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