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Kim Keever
Waterfall 04j, 2010
C-print
54 x 70 inches
Edition of six
Kim Keever & David Maisel
October 23—December 4, 2010
Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce Kim Keever & David Maisel, two solo exhibitions of new photography. There will be an opening on Saturday October 23rd from 4-7pm at the gallery with both artists present.
Kim Keever’s large-scale photographs are created by meticulously constructing miniature topographies in a 200-gallon tank, which is then filled with water. These dioramas of fictitious environments are brought to life with colored lights and the dispersal of pigment, producing ephemeral atmospheres that he must quickly capture with his large-format camera.
Keever’s painterly panoramas represent a continuation of the landscape tradition, as well as an evolution of the genre. Referencing a broad history of landscape painting, especially that of Romanticism, the Hudson River School and Luminism, they are imbued with a sense of the sublime. However, they also show a subversive side that deliberately acknowledges their contemporary contrivance and conceptual artifice. Keever’s staged scenery is characterized by a psychology of timelessness. A combination of the real and the imaginary, they document places that somehow we know, but never were.
David Maisel’s large-scaled photographs show the physical impact on the land from industrial efforts such as mining, logging, water reclamation, and military testing. Because the sites he works with are often remote and inaccessible, Maisel frequently works from an aerial perspective, thereby permitting images and photographic evidence that would be otherwise unattainable.
This exhibition will focus on “The Terminal Mirage”, “The Lake Project” and the “Oblivion”, series by Maisel. Both of these series survey the tensions between nature and culture that are typical in Maisel’s photographs. In The Lake Project (2001-2002), David Maisel documents the human destruction of California’s Owens Lake, destroyed in 1926 by the Los Angeles Aqueducts. The aerial photographs of the lake present the viewer with images that are both awe inspiring and unsettling. The artist’s aerial views scramble traditional depictions of the landscape, turning images of environmentally ravaged land into vast abstract fields. Terminal Mirage (2003-2005) continues the artist’s investigation of the impacted environment transforming aerial views of polluted lands and bodies of water into planes of saturated color, belying their foreboding subject matter. Oblivion (2004-2006) documents urban views of Los Angeles. Using an aerial vantage point, he transforms the familiar into an ominous black and white map. “The aerial images in Oblivion describe a potentially desecrated urban fabric”, says Maisel, “Even as they transcribe the commonplace; they cannot help but serve as portent of some future conflagration.”
Kim Keever (b. 1955) lives & works in New York City and has a B.S. in Engineering from the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Recent exhibitions include Adamson Gallery (Washington D.C.), Kinz, Tillou & Feigen (New York, NY), and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI). Group exhibitions include Peninsula Fine Arts Center (Newport News, VA), Tucson Museum of Art (Tucson, AZ), Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art (Portland, ME), Mixed Greens Gallery (New York, NY), Rockford Art Museum (Rockford, IL), Sun Valley Center for the Arts (Ketchum, ID), Brattleboro Museum Art Center (Brattleboro, VT) and the Museum of Modern Art (New York). Public collections include the Metropolitan Museum (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York), Chrysler Museum (Norfolk, VA), the Nassau County Museum of Fine Art (Roslyn, NY) and the Hirschhorn Museum (Washington D.C.).
David Maisel (b.1961) received his BA from Princeton University, and his MFA from California College of the Arts, as well as studying at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Maisel has recently been an Artist in Residence at both the Getty Research Institute and at the Headlands Center for the Arts. He has been the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a finalist for the Prix Pictet and the Albert Award in the Visual Arts. Maisel’s photographs, multi-media projects, and public installations have been exhibited internationally, and are included in many permanent collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. His work has been the subject of three monographs: The Lake Project (Nazraeli Press, 2004), Oblivion (Nazraeli Press, 2006), and Library of Dust (Chronicle Books, 2008). Nazraeli Press will publish a new monograph, History’s Shadow, later this year. Maisel currently resides near San Francisco, CA.
Images
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Kim Keever
Forest 58e, 2008
C-print
53 x 70 inches
Edition of six -
Kim Keever
Waterfall 44d, 2010
C-print
55 x 69 inches
Edition of six -
Kim Keever
Waterfall 114j, 2010
C-print
85 x 64 inches
Edition of six -
Kim Keever
Waterfall 104f, 2010
C-print
80 x 64 inches
Edition of three -
Kim Keever
Waterfall 56f, 2010
C-print
50 x 70 inches
Edition of six -
David Maisel
Terminal Mirage 5, 2003
C-print
29 x 29 inches
Edition of ten -
David Maisel
Terminal Mirage 8, 2003
C-print
29 x 29 inches
Edition of ten -
David Maisel
Terminal Mirage 18, 2004
C-print
29 x 29 inches
Edition of ten -
David Maisel
Oblivion 7n, 2004
C-print
40 x 40 inches
Edition of ten -
David Maisel
Oblivion 14n, 2004
C-print
40 x 40 inches
Edition of ten -
David Maisel
Oblivion 18n, 2004
C-print
40 x 40 inches
Edition of ten -
David Maisel
Lake Project 6, 2001
C-print
48 x 48 inches
Edition of five -
David Maisel
Lake Project 15, 2002
C-print
48 x 48 inches
Edition of five -
David Maisel
Terminal Mirage 2, 2003
C-print
29 x 29 inches
Edition of three -
Kim Keever
Eroded Man 80d, 2010
C-print
27 x 24 inches
Edition of ten