Wednesday, September 24, 2014

BBC's Picture This: Nancy Baron


In a recent interview with the BBC, Nancy Baron discusses her photographic 
series and her own feelings on living "The Good Life" in Palm Springs. 
(Click here to listen to Baron's interview.)





Nancy Baron's exhibition "The Good Life > Palm Springs" will be on display at dnj Gallery through November 1, 2014. An artist talk will also be held at dnj Gallery on October 18, at 3pm.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Pro Photo Daily: Unlocking the Secrets of the Creative Process


An article posted through AI - AP shares insight into the creative process. 
For advice on how to unlock your inner artist, please read their article reposted below:


American Photography's 

Pro Photo Daily:


Unlocking the Secrets of the

Creative Process


by Eric Meola

Reposted from American Illustration and American Photography.
The original article can be seen here.

At a recent workshop in Maine, the noted National Geographic photographer Sam Abell asked his students to photograph a poem—to illustrate the words with images. Abell wanted the students to think about the relationship between two methods of describing imagery, and the challenges posed by interpreting words and images in our minds through photography. The dichotomy between words and images has haunted me throughout my career, and then a few months ago, a nearly 200-page PDF attachment of an e-book called Process arrived in my email as a gift from photographer-lecturer-educator John Paul Caponigro—or JP, as his friends call him. I glanced at a few pages, then put it aside on my computer’s desktop to look at later. I had met JP on several occasions—first in California before we were both scheduled to do lectures, and then again in Iceland, Antarctica and the Atacama desert while participating in Digital Photo Destinations workshops. I had only a few sketchy things to go on—that JP had graduated from Yale, that his father was the photographer Paul Caponigro, that he had grown up in New Mexico, and that he took a few weeks off to go to Italy every year.
So one day, when I got a call from my somewhat inebriated photographer-friend Arthur Meyerson and an equally inebriated JP as they joyfully celebrated the close of a Maine Photo Workshop, I told JP that I had not only readProcess but that I wanted to interview him about it. I had a lot of questions: How was his famous father? Did his mother really design Ernst Haas’s book The Creation? And most importantly, what the hell was Process really about? After all, we live in the age of iPhone photography, when nearly 300 million photographs are uploaded to Facebook every 24 hours. 

In the book Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, critic Greil Marcus describes the process that led to Dylan’s collection of more than 100 mostly unreleased songs; the music evolved from—in Marcus’s words—“a laboratory where, for a few months, certain bedrock strains of American cultural language were retrieved and reinvented.” Few photography workshops explore the creative aspects of photography as a constantly evolving set of inputs—reading, writing, sketching—that manifest themselves in the way we make images. I recognized that many of my inputs had much in common with what JP was discussing, but I wanted to know more about him and why he always seemed to be “looking away” from the image in front of us. Or was he?
Our conversation, which begins below, took place over an extended period via email, while JP was with his family in Italy.

EM: I’m fascinated by your approach to seeing, to “living” photography, which you refer to as “process.”  
JP: Art arises out of a life lived—it’s an extension of ourselves, our creative process grows and changes as we do. Art is not something separate from life. Art intensifies life.  Some cultures don’t have a word for art, considering the items/events produced that we might call art to be an overflowing of life. Seen from that perspective, everyone is an artist. So the follow-up questions would be: What kind of artist and how well do they do it?
EM: Your father is Paul Caponigro, a master landscape and still-life photographer. He once said, “It's one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it's another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” That applies to all photography, doesn’t it—from landscapes to journalistic images to portraits?
JP: Exactly. Representation is not reproduction. We make portraits of people by recording light reflecting on their bodies—often only a portion of their bodies, usually from one angle and at one moment in time. Does such an image record their changing state through time, their history, their web of relationships, their ideas, their feelings, etc? It’s important to recognize the limited nature of our creations. In representation. it’s important to recognize the gap between what we create and what’s referenced. This doesn’t make these types of images less valuable; for many people they’re the most valuable. Perhaps those limitations can be used for effect?
I spoke about this when talking about a book that is very influential to me—Jamake Highwater’s The Primal Mind. Listen to it here (under “Voice”).
EM: You recently did a print “pair” with your dad, who lives with you. His image "Galaxy Apple" is one of my favorites. How is he, and how much did he influence your own way of thinking about images?
JP: Dad’s “Galaxy Apple” is one of my favorite photographs, too. Its ability to speak both literally and metaphorically at the same time is one of the possibilities photography presents that fascinates me most, and it influenced my decision to become involved in the medium.
Dad’s influence on me as a person and an artist has been tremendous. How could it not be? He’s my father! In addition to influencing the course of my early life, presenting many interesting experiences, and influencing my world-view, he’s always been available personally, generous with his knowledge, and supportive of me as an artist. He’s an exceptionally sensitive human being. Among many other things, I appreciate his independent spirit, his unconventional thinking, and how willing he is to chart his own course. Without the influence of both of my parents I doubt I’d be as interested in spirituality, comparative mythology, relationships between man and nature, and music.
At 82 dad’s sharp and active. And yes, he’s still working—we’re going to do another print pair together soon.
EM: Your mother, Eleanor, was also an influence, I presume—after all, she designed the most influential book of photography ever—Ernst Haas’s The Creation. You must have been four or five years old at the time … did you meet Haas at that early age? What was it like to grow up in a world of art?
JP: Most people don’t know how big an influence my mother has been to me. She’s been as strong an influence on me—both as a person and as an artist—as my father. She was the painter in the family and started me drawing. She kindled my interest in “sacred” geometry and numerology. She taught me most of what I know about offset reproduction, which helped me tremendously in making the transition to digital printing and in consulting for corporations producing printers. She laid the foundations of my understanding for graphic design. She showed me the power of editing and sequencing images, by helping many artists select, sequence, reproduce and present their images. She showed me the contributions a second pair of eyes can make to artistic growth. Shall I continue?

"Constellation VI," by John Paul Caponigro

My parents’ very different interests in and uses of language sparked an interest in verbal communication and writing. Their very different sensibilities for music displayed personal voice. I experienced both of these on an almost daily basis.
As I’m writing this, a pattern in our family of artists has become clearer to me! All of us didn’t pursue careers in other arts, despite a lot of dedication to them. Mom didn’t pursue a career in painting; she became a graphic designer. My father didn’t pursue a career in music; he became a photographer. I didn’t pursue sequential art—filmmaking and graphic novels. Or did I in an entirely different way than I was thinking? 
There are so many benefits to making the visual verbal. I wrote about that in this blog post: "Making the Visual Verbal"
EM: You grew up in New Mexico, among other places, and as a child you met Brett and Cole Weston, Ansel Adams and Georgia O’Keeffe. Can you tell us a little about that? Did you have any sense of who they were?
JP: I was born in Boston, and my family moved to Ireland for a year when I was two.  Some of my earliest memories are when dad began to photograph megalithic monuments there. Then, after five years in the Connecticut woods, we moved to the high deserts of New Mexico—first to Pojaque (I went from a school where there were two African-American kids to one where there were two Caucasian kids…the rest were Hispanic and Native-American) and then to Tesuque, near Santa Fe.
Santa Fe was the kind of place where you’d walk into a restaurant and see a Navajo medicine man sitting with a Spanish rancher, an Impressionist painter, and a nuclear physicist—today you have to add a Tibetan monk into the mix. After a great private high school, Santa Fe Preparatory School, I attended Yale University and later the University of California at Santa Cruz; in addition to a great education, I got a great education in education. After college I moved near the Maine Photographic Workshops, not realizing that Kodak would soon set up The Center For Creative Imaging nearby and that as an artist in residence I would experience a dream come true—Photoshop. Many years earlier, while my mother was overseeing the production of Eliot Porter’s Intimate Landscapes book, I was shown a Scitex machine, which my mother called “a million-dollar coloring book.” I whispered under my breath, “What if an artist got hold of one of these? I wish I had one!” That wish came true. We traveled a lot and I met a lot of interesting people—that was as much a part of my education as my formal education.
As the son of two parents involved in different but related aspects of the art world, I’ve had meetings with many remarkable men and women. I met all of the people you mentioned and many more. Not all of them were famous. Many people wouldn’t recognize the names of people I met who were very influential to the photography community. Our family of artists would visit artists, curators, dealers, and publishers—or they’d visit us.
When I was very young, I had no idea how other people regarded these people. When I was a kid accompanying my father when he taught in Yosemite, I knew Ansel Adams made beautiful photographs and played the piano beautifully, but to me Ansel Adams was really cool because he had a three-legged dog named “Tripod,” even cooler because he had a tiny adorable wife who often seemed like a fairy-tale character, cooler still because he had his own gallery and workshop program in Yosemite National Park, and the coolest guy on the planet because they told me he had a stick he used for controlling the clouds—that is until I couldn’t find a cloud stick in his camera bag like they said. My appreciation for him deepened when I was older and began to understand how much he did to help other artists and the environment.
As I grew older, I began to realize other people looked at and treated these people differently. Often they treated my father differently; sometimes acted differently. I’ve witnessed a lot of inflated behavior. It’s rarely pretty.
For the most part, my parents didn’t change the way they related to people of notoriety—and neither did I. As a result, I’ve got a somewhat different relationship to celebrity. While I’m interested in what fame does to people’s behavior, fame doesn’t change the way I think and feel about them.
I’ve seen people change their behavior because they became famous. I sympathize, but I don’t respect it. I do respect people who attain fame and don’t let it go to their head. Fame can take a terrible toll on people and the people around them, especially their families. It even takes its toll on people who react to fame in inflated ways. To some, it can be a sign of respect and a relief to stop the nonsense and just be real. While I wish success for everyone, I wouldn’t wish celebrity on anyone. Or rather, I wish our culture’s reactions to fame would mature. I celebrate examples of people using their notoriety conscientiously.
To me, while she’s one of my favorite painters, Georgia O’Keeffe was a grouchy old bat who told me her dogs liked only her (after I’d been licked for hours waiting for my mom to finish working with her). But, aside from being very talented, she was also very intelligent, and I gave her lots of brownie points for recognizing, respecting, and valuing my mother’s talents and contributions when they worked together on projects.
I was deeply impressed by Eliot Porter, who worked with my mother on many projects. He was a Harvard-trained microbiologist who was influenced by Thoreau and who devoted his life to the visual arts. He could speak well about almost any subject (science, politics, business) but not art. That an important elderly person would go out of his way to affectionately challenge a teenager like me, sometimes taking a devil’s advocate position to do it, and expect me to support my ideas well, showing me that we didn’t have to agree to respect one another, was just one of many life-lessons I learned from him.
EM: Why do you think Porter couldn’t speak well about art, of all subjects? Was he uncomfortable discussing art, or photography in particular?  Or was it a subject that transcended discussion in some way?
JP: I found Eliot’s limited ability to discuss art mysterious. (Add to this mystery, his wife was a painter, and two of his three sons became artists—one a sculptor and one a painter.) He was so articulate! He would talk about technique, but not about aesthetics. If I had to guess, I would say he was comfortable discussing anything that related to his substantial scientific training while he was largely self-taught in the arts and so reticent to go further there, but then he wasn’t trained in political science and he was eager to discuss politics. Perhaps, he felt the subject of art was too subjective to make rigorously supported arguments? I’m theorizing here. Related to this mystery was watching him work with my mother to select and sequence his images. He could make photographs (boy could he!). I think he made images intuitively. But he had a hard time evaluating them after they were made. I think developing a stronger capacity to make verbal statements about art would have helped him in those areas.

"Incubation II," by John Paul Caponigro

One of the most important things I learned from all these meetings with remarkable men and women was that that all had their own sensibilities. Some of these people used the same tools but they made very different things with them. That’s inspiring! This is particularly true with photography, which whether chemical or digital is so technological. My father and I would photograph the same things side-by-side using the same tools and make different images. That’s one of my other essential fascinations with photography. How does that happen? It’s a profound mystery. And it’s wonderful!
EM: There is a part of me that rejects “process,” that wants to embrace Weegee’s quote about “f/8 and be there.”  Yet I realize Weegee had his own process, whether it was simply his approach, his philosophy, his own notebooks, sketches, thoughts, or ideas. I think many photographers just pick up a camera and start shooting. The writer Barry Lopez once tried to be a photographer and gave up. In an essay in his book About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory,he examines the dichotomy between words and images. My favorite part of your book Process is the chapter titled “Write,” in which you discuss titles, poetry, associations and quotes. Why are words so important to photography and to our visual language? 
JP: Isn’t it interesting that this question even needs to be asked? What aspects of photographers want to be non-verbal? When is being non-verbal productive and when is it counterproductive? Other members or our photography community are highly verbal—editors, publishers, dealers, curators, and critics. The fact that the producers in the photographic community are the ones who are the least well equipped to use language productively has consequences.
Words can be powerful tools. Think of all the things you can do with words. Generate ideas. Clarify a response. Determine a goal. Frame a question. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses. Make comparisons and contrasts. Identify an influence. Select an approach. Test a theory. Explore alternatives. Identify what’s missing. Solve a problem. Advocate. Motivate. Evaluate. Find a new direction.
No matter what discipline you’re in, why wouldn’t you use these powerful tools we call words? Try not using them! Can you? So why not use them well and unlock as much of their power as you can?
Many linguists have explored how language influences thought, going almost as far as saying language is thought. Benjamin Whorf said, “Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a framework for it.” If a culture has a lot of words for something, it indicates those people have a highly developed relationship with it. If a culture doesn’t have a word for something, it indicates either a very different relationship to a subject or a blind spot. Certain tribes in the Amazon jungle have many words for green, but none for blue. The Inuit have dozens of words for snow. We currently have too few words for photography. (At best, we amend the word photography with other words—photojournalism and photo illustration.) Look at all the words we have for various kinds of writing: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, prose, journalism, journaling, interview, biography, autobiography, screenplay, short story, novel, trilogy, epic, lyric, etc, etc, etc. The photographic community and culture at large would do well to repurpose many words drawn from our literary traditions and use them in our visual traditions.
The question is not, “Should I manipulate a photograph?” Since the invention of photography, all kinds of things have been done to photographs. The question is, “What happens when I do or don’t manipulate a photograph?”
Limited language wastes time and results in less productive debates and diverts attention away from more productive discussions. One of the fundamental things I’m trying to address through my work is complicated by limited language. Our culture often talks about people versus nature; we use words like “us” and “it.” We draw lines and take sides. Our current use of language psychologically distances us. This makes it harder to describe people as parts of nature. If we enter that mindset, we think about ourselves and act in our world differently.

_______________________________________________________________________
The exhibition “Paul Caponigro and John Paul Caponigro: Generations” will be on view at the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, Virginia from September 27 through March 28, 2015.
Photographer Eric Meola is a recipient of the 2014 George Eastman “Power of the Image Award.” His latest book is “India: In Word and Image” (Revised and Updated, 2013).

Friday, September 19, 2014

Larson finalist for Photographer's Forum 2014 Best of Contest


dnj Gallery artist R. Dean Larson has been selected as a finalist for Photographer's Forum 2014 Best of Photography contest. As a finalist, Larson's image will be included in their hardcover book, Best of Photography 2014.





Photographer Forum's book, Best of Photography 2014is scheduled to be published in December of this year and can be pre-ordered here

For information regarding purchasing a print by R. Dean Larson, please contact us

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Robert von Sternberg featured in the LA Times

dnj Gallery artist Robert von Sternberg has recently been featured in the LA Times. This article covers a current exhibition entitled Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley, ca. 1970-1990, which showcases the artwork of von Sternberg and other LA artists who were part of this overlooked art scene in LA's suburb.

Robert von Sternberg, Reseda Parking Lot, 1972, carbon ink print


"Partly annexed by Los Angeles in 1915, the Valley became known as "America's suburb" in the 1950s and '60s before morphing into what some perceived to be an urban dystopia of sagging strip malls and bland chain stores, reflecting the worst of L.A. — something that residents had tried to escape. Although pockets of the Valley were marginalized as blighted and beleaguered through the last 30 years of the 20th century, they nonetheless nurtured a thriving art scene.

"That scene has been overlooked by the city's major cultural institutions, Willick says — a fate cemented by its exclusion from the Getty's lauded Pacific Standard Time exhibitions, which told the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene from 1945 through 1980 via shows at more than 60 venues across Southern California. Though a few exhibitions did include the work of Valley artists, Willick says, none was about the Valley specifically."
-Jessica Gelt, LA Times

For the full LA Times article, please click here.


Robert von Sternberg, Hair Bubble, 1972, carbon ink print


Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley, ca. 1970-1990 is currently being held at the Cal State Northridge art galleries, and will run through October 11th. More information on this exhibition can be found here. For any inquiries regarding Robert von Sternberg's photographs, please contact us.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Nancy Baron in the News



photographs by Nancy Baron

Nancy Baron, Backyard Morning,
2012, archival pigment print, 48" x 32


Nancy Baron has been receiving many positive reviews. Among her recent features on the NY Times and Slate.com, Baron has been featured internationally on the following publications:


Italian Architect and Design's "An American Dream"




Baron.adtoday.italia.2

Baron.pdn photo of the day



Baron.bbc.mundo




Baron.Eichler blog






Now through November 1, 2014 at dnj Gallery.


Thought of as 'Paradise,' Palm Springs is a vacation spot for much of southern California. It is located about 100 miles from Los Angeles. Palm Springs has this resort reputation, which has spread nation-wide, because of its attractions amidst the desert sun. Nancy Baron, on the contrary, highlights the community aspects of locals there, sharing the small town quality that exists. Baron does not glamorize Palm Springs; she is a part-time resident, and is able to rejoice in the everyday life of this place. As she states, "I aim to capture and celebrate the majesty in worlds that could easily be overlooked, seen as mundane, or otherwise misunderstood." Her photographs, illuminating the use of saturated colors and a specific style of decoration, emphasizes her observations and the possibility of a path to 'The Good Life.'



2525 michigan avenue, suite J1
santa monica, california 90404
310.315.3551

For directions to our gallery, please click here
dnj Gallery is now on Artnet, so be sure to check us out!
dnj Gallery is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Harvard-Westlake: One Moment, One Meal, One Photograph


The photo students at Harvard-Westlake School have kicked off their 2014-2015 academic year with a photo project focusing on connecting with others and inspiring a feeling of community, regardless of geographic location and cultural boundaries.

HW PHOTO

One Moment - One Meal - One Photograph

On September 4th at 12pm , students from around L.A. sat down for a bite in unison and captured a shared experience at the exact same time by taking a photograph and sharing their meal and lunch experience that day.

These simultaneous still life snapshots – self-portraits of people and their foods – have been posted online to share.  To see all of the images that were submitted, please check out Harvard-Westlake Photo's Tumblr.

Photographer:  Hector Velasquez
Location: Humanitas Academy of Art and Technology , East LA
Photographer: Oliver Loshitzer
Location: Harvard Westlake School, Los Angeles , CA
Photographer: Antonio Cue
Location: Mountain Gate, Los Angeles


dnj Gallery annually holds an exhibition for the photography students of Harvard-Westlake in the spring. For more information, please refer to dnj Gallery's website.


Saturday, September 13, 2014

Upcoming Exhibition: Suda House

dnj Gallery artist Suda House will be featured in an upcoming exhibition inspired by the design aesthetic and creative philosophy of architect Irving Gill.

Opening Reception


Friday, September 26
5:00pm - 7:00pm
at Wisteria Cottage
La Jolla Historical Society
  
The exhibition will be open Thursday - Sunday, 12:00pm - 4:00pm
September 27, 2014 - January 25, 2015  







"Master Architect Irving Gill (1870-1936) is considered a pioneer of the early modern movement in architecture, and there are numerous examples of his work still remaining in San Diego.  A number of these important buildings are in La Jolla, including the La Jolla Woman’s Club, La Jolla Recreation Center, and at The Bishop’s School and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  The photographers for this project, Philipp Scholz Rittermann, Suda House, and John Durant, were commissioned by the Society to take Gill’s philosophical idea and produce a body of new works each of which includes all or part of a Gill building.  They were asked to be creative in their interpretation, to diverge from standard building portraits, and to translate a historical idea into a modern perspective.  The resulting exhibition presents an adventure into the legacy of Gill and this unique aspect of his philosophy, and the three artist’s present interpretations that are uniquely suited to the media of contemporary photography."

For more information about the exhibition, 
please click HERE.

Upcoming Exhibitions: Laura Parker


dnj Gallery artist Laura Parker's work will be featured in two upcoming exhibitions in southern California this month.

Opening Sunday, September 14th from 3-6pm is Captured Image, Vintage to Contemporary Photography. This exhibition will be held at Norco College Art Gallery, located in the Riverside Community College District. Laura Parker will be showing all five pieces from her "Borrowed Air" series. This exhibition will run through October 10th.

Light On and On, 2000, Type C print mounted on aluminum, 20 x 63 inches


Opening Saturday, September 20th starting at 6pm is 6018 Wilshire. This exhibition will be held at Edward Cella Art and Architecture. This group show will feature over 100 artists. Laura Parker will be showing a piece from her rubbings series, Labyrinth, Red III. This exhibition will run through November 22nd. 


Rubbings (Labyrinth, Red III), 2011 chromagenic monotype print, unique, 20 x 20 inches

Friday, September 12, 2014

Current Exhibition & Artist Talk: Buzz Spector

Buzz Spector has an exhibition now on at Bruno David Gallery located in Saint Louis, Missouri. This show features New Work by Buzz Spector, including his new video work "Selected Poems".

This exhibition will run through October 11th. On Saturday, September 27th at 3pm, Buzz Spector will give an artist talk regarding his new work. Bruno David Gallery is also exhibiting a group show "Untitled", organized by Keri Lappas, which will run concurrently with Spector's exhibition.



Current Exhibitions
Sep 05, 2014 - Oct 11, 2014



SAVE THE DATE: Gallery Talk by Buzz Spector at Bruno David Gallery. 
Saturday, September 27 at 3 pm.

Buzz Spector' s excavations of books and reconstructions of libraries are well-known, but his work with found and altered volumes has always been accompanied by works on paper made out of elements from their dust jackets. As Spector has written, " books are formal presentations of text. They have titles, after all, and come jacketed, with paragraphs of introduction slipped between their covers and their pages." This new work features collages made from dust jacket elements in the front gallery, while in the main gallery are larger collages and drawings, a series of wall-mounted sculptures incorporating details of photographs of authors, plus a reinstallation of Frieze, the 60-foot long arrangement of photos of authors Spector showed at the Huntington Museum of Art last fall. Spector 's ongoing meditation on reading and the culture of the book extends here to reflections on how- and when -writers become authors, how work of the imagination is performed via posing, and how the specialized, but also highly conventional, language of dust jacket blurbs can itself be excavated in search of new narrative meanings.



Front Room
BUZZ SPECTOR: New Work

Main Gallery
BUZZ SPECTOR: New Work

New Media Room
BUZZ SPECTOR: New Work

Project Room
UNTITLED

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Current Exhibition: Hung Liu

Hung Liu is featured in a current exhibition, Tilling The Soil, now on through October 25, 2014. This exhibition is held at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, located in Kansas City, Missouri.




""Tilling the Soil," a selection of paintings from Hung Liu's personal collection, dating from 1993 to the present, is intended both as a parallel exhibition to "Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu" at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and - very importantly - as an    homage to the late Byron Cohen, whose enthusiasm for Liu's work over the years has done much to establish her reputation in Kansas City. The fact that the Kemper holds the largest collection of Liu's dramatic and historic art is due in large part to Byron's upbeat faith in her work. 

"Showing at the Sherry Leedy Gallery, the paintings in "Tilling the Soil" depict subjects that have spanned Liu's career, including young Chinese prostitutes from the early 20th century, modern young women from the 1920s, peasants working in the countryside, prisoners, adults longing for the past and day-dreaming children. Together, these paintings - along with new mixed-media works from Trillium Graphics - capture the courageous, historical, and often melancholic gaze toward the homeland that characterizes Liu's sensibility as an artist.  

Hung Liu, Synthesis I, 2014, Oil on Canvas, 60" x 78"

"Born in 1948 and sent to the countryside for four years during the Cultural Revolution, Liu, who emigrated to the United States in 1984, came of age in China before there was a Chinese avant-garde. Older than all but a few of the first generation of contemporary artists there, she represents a perspective based in personal and family experience that takes in the whole of post-revolutionary Chinese history (that is, since the invention of photography). 

"Mostly known for paintings based on historical photographs of nineteenth-century and pre-revolutionary China, including images of prostitutes, refugees, street performers, soldiers, and so forth, Liu also washes (and sometimes washes away) her subjects with veils of linseed oil that, as she once remarked, "both preserve and destroy the image." Preferring to work from black-and-white photographs that are grainy and difficult to see, Liu liberates her subjects from the gray tones of the past by bringing them vividly to life as painted images. In the process of turning old photographs into new paintings, she often inserts traditional motifs from Chinese "bird and flower" painting, Buddhist iconography, or calligraphy, as if to comfort the cataclysms of 20th century China with the wisdom of its own ancient past. 

"With "Tilling the Soil," Liu returns to works that have nurtured her over the years - 
including three brand-new paintings - offering them now in memory of her long-time art dealer, Byron Cohen, one of Kansas City's true enthusiasts for art, for artists, and for the 
community he helped cultivate."

- Jeff Kelley


Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Photographs from our Opening Reception: Nancy Baron's "The Good Life > Palm Springs"

Last weekend we held our opening reception for Nancy Baron's "The Good Life > Palm Springs". This exhibition will be on display through November 1, 2014. For more information, please refer to dnj Gallery's webpage

Nancy Baron signing her books, published by Kehrer Verlag.















Tuesday, September 9, 2014

NYU Art Opening

Opening today, September 9th from 6-8pm, at Kimmel Galleries, 8th Floor, 60 Washington Sq. South.



featuring artists:

Matthew Soltesz, Daniela Groza, 
Ginny Mangrum and Heather Culp


The narrative of the exhibition seeks to understand the void in human connection, and the universality of the human condition.


Ginny Mangrum, House, archival lightjet print, 16 x 20 inches


"Through their photography, a dialogue is constructed from portraits of exteriors and interiors of spaces, clearly occupied though lacking the presence of a body, leaving the residue of inhabitance to the voyeur's interpretation."
-Pamela Jean Tinnen
Curator


This exhibition will be on view through November 30, 2014. Please click here for more information.