Rimma Gerlovina & Valeriy Gerlovin

Russian Samizdat Art Pioneers Conceptual Photo Photograph Gerlovin & Gerlovina

1992

HARRY BOWERS T E N P H O T O G R A P H S I DON'T LOOK FOR PHOTOGRAPHS I INVENT THEM I recall my first meeting with Harry Bowers in California a few years ago. As he produced his large-scale prints, I was at first flabbergasted, not only by their size, but by their seamless perfection. Technique appeared to be everything but then technique as technique simply vanished. After the first moment, tech­nique was no longer an issue, but rather a passageway to the imagery. Suffice it to say about Harry Bowers' working style that he is an obsessive man. Trained as an engineer, he has turned that discipline to art. His lenses, equipment and darkroom, much of it exactingly manu­factured by himself to answer certain needs, serve the desire of the artist to take photographic tech­nique to its ultimate perfection in invisibility and transparency. I respect obsession in art, and particularly in photography, because obsession in photography passes beyond the easy, middle ground of image making to a more demanding, more difficult, yet more rewarding end. Bowers' obsession is to eliminate "photography as technique." No grain, no decisive moments, no journalism, or, seemingly, direct auto­biographical endeavors appear in his work. Bowers is an artist of synthesis who controls his environment if only in the studio exactly to his liking. The images he creates are formal structures, saucy stories on occasion, which may offer hints of a darker, more frightening sexuality, but what you see is the end product of an experiment in which nothing save the original insight perhaps is left to chance. We seem fascinated with the idea of replication of reality in art. Popular painting frequently reproduces a scene "with the accuracy of a photograph," and photographs may "make you feel as though you were right there." The very invisibility of the photographic medium is important to Bowers, in that it allows him to maneuver his subject matter without concern for rendering it in an obvious art medium which would interfere with the nature of the materials he uses. The formal subtleties of Bowers' recent work are as delicious and ambiguous in their interrelationships as the best Cubist collages, yet while those col­lages always suggest their parts through edge and texture, these photographs present a structure through a surface purity. Bowers' earlier works, for example, the Skirts I Have Known series, were formed of bits of clothing belong­ing to Bowers and his wife or found at local thrift shops. These works fused an elegance of pattern and texture, reminiscent of Miriam Shapiro...

Provenance: Deaccessioned from a New York University. Condé + Beveridge Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge Condé born in Hamilton in 1940. Beveridge born in Ottawa in 1945. Both live ...

American artist and photographer, Sandra Haber, born 1956 Exhibited at MoMA, 1984

Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin Compass, 1988 Aluminum sculpture, mixed media and c-print photograph construction, c-print, felt tip marker 12.5 h × 12.5w × 4 d in (30 × 30 × 6 cm) Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin were founding members of the underground conceptual movement Samizdat in the Soviet Union, described in their book Russian Samizdat Art. Based on a play of paradoxes, their work is rich with philosophic and mythological implications, reflected in their writing as well. Their book Concepts was published in Russia in 2012. The work by Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin is emphatically contemporary. The artist couple were part of the Moscow Conceptualists, their performance Costumes, from 1977, deepened their ongoing work with linguistic semiotic systems and their own bodies. Considering the context in which Gerlovina and Gerlovin made their work—that of political restrictions on public life, of unfreedom, and censorship—their collaborative togetherness must also be read as a space of possibility for political community and resistance. Rimma Gerlovina’s hair is featured prominently in the art of the Gerlovins as a constructing element of the body. Used for the linear drawings her braids transmit transpersonal waves reminiscent of an aura of live filaments. Long loose hairs function as threads of life; streaming in abundance, they allude to Aphrodisiac vitality and Samsonian strength. On the other hand, they are the haircloth worn during mourning and penitence. In New York they continued to make sculptural objects, and their photographic projects grew into an extended series called Photoglyphs. In their photographs, they use their own faces to explore the nature of thought and what lies beyond it. Since coming to the United States in 1980, they had many exhibitions in galleries and museums including the Art Institute of Chicago. The New Orleans Museum of Art launched a retrospective of their photography, which traveled to fifteen cities. Group exhibitions include the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C., Bonn Kunsthalle, Germany, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and others. Samizdat or “self-published” began in the Soviet Union, and Samizdat art consists mainly of books and magazines published and distributed by the artists who made them. Samizdat art has sources in the innovative books and magazines turned out by the early 20th century Russian avant-garde—artists and writers like Olga Rozanova, Vladimir Mayakovsky, El Lissitzky, and Alexander Rodchenko. Artists as varied as Alexander Archipenko, Leon Bakst, Marc Chagall, Naum Gabo, Alexandra Exter...

16 x 16 inches 40 x 40 cm Edition of 15 Archival Pigment Print on a Baryta Paper Mounted and Framed 32 x 32 inches 80 x 80 cm Edition of 7 Archival Pigment Print on a Baryta Paper ...

Chromogenic LightJet print (Edition of 5) Signed and numbered, verso 20 x 16 inches, sheet This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Robert Flynt...

This photography is a reminiscence to a PF card from 1968 done by my father. The replica in a bigger format was done on the occasion of his solo exhibition in June 2023 in Slovakia. Will be signed and a single copy of the photo for sale.

Alexis Fidetzis How to Brutally Construct an Absurd Sense of Pride digital print on paper 30 x 150 cm (7 pieces)