«Process(Ing)»

Ellen Carey, Corin Hewitt, Jason Loebs, Mariah Robertson and James Welling «Process(ing)» 76 rue de Turenne : May 7 - June 18, 2011 Galerie Perrotin is delighted to present «Process(ing)», a group exhibition featuring the works of Ellen Carey, Corin Hewitt, Jason Loebs, Mariah Robertson and James Welling, from May 7 to June 18, 2011. Within an eclectic body of work, the selected artists examine process and record in the photographic medium. Here the photographic click is coupled, or at times replaced, by a series of manipulations, material interventions and technical experiments that transform the photograph’s instantaneous moment into a record of its making. Not unlike painting or sculpture, here photography reveals visible traces of its formal process. Ellen Carey reduces photography to its most basic denominators, substituting the necessity of «taking» a picture with the desire to make an image. In her series of monochromes and multichromes, she exploits and oversteps the characteristic features of her 20 x 24 in. Polaroid camera, altering its color pods to block or mix colors to create chromatic records of the very process of her interventions -a procedure accentuated by her pulling apart of both the positive and negative of the various images. Whereas Carey utilizes the pigment of the Poloraid to create painterly compositions, Mariah Robertson reverts, at times with irreverence, to historical photographic techniques. Using photosensitive paper as a mould on which she imprints residues of objects and photographs, the print unrolls as a large-scale installation, unwinding both an independent narrative and the layered history of its making. James Welling manipulates the most essential material of photography - light - to create colorful abstract and mysterious layered compositions. In his «Mysteries» and «Degrades» series, the artist’s control of exposure, like a paintbrush, draws out tonal gradations and compositional depth that take on a spectral, fugitive dimension. And for his «Screen» photograms, a retro-projector propels light onto a fiberglass screen, whose shadows are faintly recorded, leaving delicate incisions of its grains and texture on the photograph’s surface. By this alchemic gesture, light unfolds into tangible form. Distancing farther the photograph of its dependency on the camera, Jason Loebs and Corin Hewitt subvert the mimetic function of an industrial device - the scanner- , transforming it into a resource for the photographic process. Loebs documents the decay of both an image and an industrial machine, creating images that record the literal moment of death in a representative process. Here he pours water onto a scanner and subsequently prints the visual effects of the machine’s slow destruction. The exhibited prints capture the machine’s final scan as a kind of epitaph of its forced malfunction. Encased in plastic bags, the prints are uncanny cadaverous - allegories of an image’s death. While Loebs, suggests a kind of reverse entropy, proving the fragility and impotence of a mechanical device and perhaps the futile endeavor of representation itself, Corin Hewitt utilizes the same device to capture a natural process of decay, that paradoxically offers continual visual regeneration. In Corin Hewitt’s stratified monochromes, rocks, dirt and earth are scanned and compressed into a monochromatic digital image. The print is then placed into the ground so that it can be materially composted, consumed by nature’s own deconstructive process. The desintegrating print is exhumed, scanned and printed, appearing as lunar, organic compositions. Much like nature’s own cycle of creation and decay, Hewitt’s photographs are part of an ongoing process, the product of various performances. During his «Seed Stage» performance at the Whitney Museum in 2008, the artist sculpted with perishable materials - plants, food… Recalling the tradition of vanitas images, Hewitt explores the mutations of objects through temporal passages and manual interventions, providing glimpses of ephemerality - much like the essence of the photographic image. Referring to a continual state of transcience, the artists in this exhibition remind us that processing is both a technical procedure and a cognitive experience. Jason LOEBS Mariah ROBERTSON «Untitled (Ned Led say sorry) 1-5» 2009 «14» 2011 Digital C-Print, Plastic Bag, Gromets Unique color print on one roll of Fuji Chrystal Archive RA4 paper 41.5 x 60.5 inches each / 220 x 60.5 inches (complete set) 50 cm x 30 m / 19 3/4 inches x 98.5 feet Ellen Carey (b. 1952, USA) lives and works in Hartford, CT & in New York. She is an internationally and nationally recognized lends-based, camera and photograph artist, whose work has been the subject of forty-six one person exhibitions in museums, alternative spaces and commercial galleries. Her work is in the permanent collections of over twenty museums such as The Albright Knox Museum, Museum at the Chicago Art Institute, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work has been reproduced in books such as «The Polaroid Collections» (Taschen), «A Century of Color: From Autochrome to Digital», written by former Victoria & Albert Museum photography curator, Pamela Roberts (Carlton Books, Ltd. London), and «The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photograph» written by Lyle Rexer. Corin Hewitt (b. 1971, Burlington, Vermont, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including «Wall», Western Bridge (2010) and «Corin Hewitt : Weavings», Seattle Art Museum (2009), Seattle, WA ; «Seed Stage», the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008) ; and will also have a solo exhibition at Laurel Gitlen, New York, September 2011. In the past two years, Hewitt’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, Modern Painters, and The New Yorker among others. Jason Loebs (b. 1981) lives and works in New York and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Audio Visual Arts, NY ; Bortolami Gallery, NY, Emily Harvey Foundation, NY ; Renwick Gallery, NY ; Artists Space New York ; He is currently in residency preparing for an exhibition and project with Pavilion in Bucharest. Mariah Robertson (b. 1975) lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work has been exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at the renowned artist run gallery Guild and Greyshkul, NY and a recent group shows at MoMA/PS1, NY and The Center For Photography, Pittsburg. She will have a solo museum show at the Baltic Contemporary Art Centre, UK in June 2011 and will be part of an upcoming Art21 documentary series. Her work was recently included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY and the LA County Museum of Art, CA. James Welling (b.1951) lives and works in Los Angeles where he is a Professor in the Department of Art at University of California. Originally associated with the «Pictures Generation» in the early 1980s in New York, James Welling’s work has been exhibited in major museums in Europe and the United States. In 2000, his retrospective exhibition «James Welling Photographs, 1974-1999», originated at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Recently, Welling’s photographs from Los Angeles were exhibited at Centre Pompidou in Paris in Los Angeles 1955-1985. He participated in the Whitney Biennial in 2008, and his works from the 1970s were included in The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984 (2009) at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Work by the artist is held in many important museum collections including, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York ; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York ; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles ; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna ; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo. «Process(ing)» is curated by Daphné Valroff, who recently started working at Galerie Perrotin. Before that, she worked at Maccarone, Taxter & Spengemann in NY and Kaufmann Repetto in Milan, Italy. Corin HEWITT, James WELLING James WELLING Ellen CAREY «Recomposed Monochrome (72, 124, 58)», «Degrade IPMG» 2005 «Degrade IMPR» 2005 «Multichrome Orange/Purple» 2011 C-print C-print Polaroid paper (positive & negative) Digital pigment print 39 x 34 inches 37 3/4 x 33 1/4 inches 34 x 22 inches (x 2) 30 1/4 x 22 1/2 inches For all images : Courtesy of the Artists & Galerie Perrotin, Paris For any additional information, please contact : Héloïse Le Carvennec [email protected] T. + 33 1 42 16 91 80.

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