There are two artists I am looking at right now that both excite me and are influencing the direction of my work: Jan Dibbets and Spencer Finch. Jan Dibbets currently has a show up at Gladstone Gallery titled “New Horizons”. After going through a two year stint of focusing on photographing horizon lines, I immediately related to this exhibit on a personal level. The show is comprised of two photos matched up in various ways by the horizon and cropped into various geometric shapes that create a formalistic harmony throughout the series.
Taken from the press release:
“For this new body of work entitled “New Horizons,” Dibbets returns to the optical structure that has become his hallmark. As Erik Verhagen says in his recent study of Dibbets’ oeuvre, “The horizon is not a subject like other subjects, for it exists only through and in relation to our sense of sight.” It is objective and subjective, circular and rectilinear, static and mobile. In these photographs, which conjoin different photographs of a landscape and seascape along the line of the horizon, Dibbets channels it as structuring principle, not only determining space and point of view, but also—in a very painterly way—the composition itself. By subordinating the mobility of the camera to the standardization of a straight line, these panoramas create a subtle tension between the seamlessness of the horizon line and the disjunction of land and sea, only further accentuated by the resulting asymmetrical compositions.”
Sea-Land C/B1, 2007 Two unique color photographs mounted on mat board with graphite; 26 1/4 x 61 1/8 inches (66.7 x 155.3 cm) framed
Land-Sea AB3, 2007 Two unique color photographs mounted on mat board with graphite; 40 7/8 x 56 inches (103.8 x 142.2 cm) framed
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©Bernard Plossu
