Modena - Vintage Offset after Luigi Ghirri - 1980

1980

Modena is an original offset print by Luigi Ghirri. The artwork is the offset poster of the exhibition held by the artist at Rondanini Galleria d'Arte Contemporanea in 1980. Th...

Portrait is a vintage offset print realized by Franco Sarnari. Hand-signed in pencil. Good conditions. Realized with precise strokes, the work represents a Portrait and fragment ...

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...

SEASONS (1981) This is for the single print listed here. (not the outside folder or title sheet) Title: Flowers in Hand. This one is hand signed and dated verso. Seasons explores the seasons of Man, Woman, Child, Civilization, Nature and Technology. First digital artwork purchased by the Metropolitan Museum. Date: 1980-1981 Medium: vintage color photocopy print. “I worked at The Metropolitan Museum in 1981, when they acquired [Lesley’s] SEASONS portfolio. We knew we wanted it, even though we didn’t have a category for it.” David Kiehl, Curator of Prints and Special Collections The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. Lesley Schiff (born 1951) is an American fine artist. Schiff studied painting at the Art Institute Chicago before developing her signature practice using color laser printers to create images. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Mead Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major museums, corporate and private collections globally. Lesley Schiff revolutionized the photocopier from being an office tool to just another instrument in the artist's arsenal. Rather than addressing the tool in her work, Schiff instead uses the photocopier like a paintbrush to realize her vision. Once a painter, Schiff says: “I never intended to stop painting. I just decided to start painting with a modern tool. Working with the color laser printer keeps you in your culture. It's like America. Plugged in. Electronic. Direct." Painting with light, Schiff's body of work outlines a cycle of life: man, woman, child, civilization, nature, technology. More recent works challenge the viewer to understand the concept of eye-levels and perspectives, reinventing the way we see. Schiff's work was the Metropolitan Museum of Art's first digital acquisition, and most recently, was featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art in "Experiments in Electrostatics". She uses a color laser printer “like a paintbrush” to create her art. She has said about her work and her tool: “I never intended to stop painting. I just decided to start painting with a modern tool. Working with the color laser printer keeps you in your culture. It's like America. Plugged in. Electronic. Direct—but no matter how hi-tech my tools become, I’m a painter, but instead of painting with oils, I paint with light. The Whitney Museum will show Lesley Schiff's pioneering SEASONS portfolio in its entirety. Many prominent collections acquired SEASONS as their first digital artwork. She participated in the Punk Art show in the 1970's. Her work kind of relates to Fluxus and Dada. Leslie Schiff moved from Chicago to New York in the early 1970s. Much of her art involves collage and the Xerox photocopy machine. Her images are rooted in her personal psyche and have an intuitive meaning that is not always easily understood. In exhibitions, Xerox sheets are combined and displayed decoratively on the wall. Schiff has also created books; and made video and sound tapes. She was included in the seminal New York/New Wave 1981 exhibition show at MoMA PS1 along with Jean-Michel Basquiat, William S.Burroughs, David Byrne, Larry Clark, Crash (John Matos), Ronnie Cutrone, Brian Eno, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Ray Johnson, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Mapplethorpe, Kenny Scharf, Steven Sprouse, Andy Warhol and Lawrence Weiner. She did a “visual biography,” comprised of portraits of Bob Dylan—depicted at different ages, from his 20s to his 60s—illustrations of his lyrics, and images of iconic objects like his sunglasses and harmonica. Schiff collaborated with Matthew Carter...