ART LEAGUE GALLERY
Richard Koenig: Photographic Prevarications March 15 - May 18, 2008
They say a picture speaks a 1,000 words, but how truthful are these words in contemporary photography? Plan to be deceived by the illusionary work of Richard Koenig: Photographic Prevarications on view at the SBRMA from March 15-May 18, 2008.
We see them in the newspapers and on the television news, images of the ghastly aftermath of a disaster: a distraught family watching as their house is on fire, war imagery of dark billowing smoke, and nearly dead, starving refugees in 3rd world countries. But how much is true, and how much is a manipulation for effect? Usually it takes a trained eye to spot the affects of photographic manipulation. With the advent of high-resolution digital cameras, powerful personal computers and sophisticated photo-editing software, the manipulation of images is becoming more common, but not necessarily new in the history of photography.
When used in art works, photographic fakery becomes a tool for the artist, not a journalistic scam. Koenig deceives by re-photographing the photograph creating illusions that take more than a passing glance to figure out. Koenig states, "For the last eight years, I have been working with pictures that I re-photograph in one way or another, suggesting a tautology or a form of meta-photography. I use this duplicative tactic as a way of exploring the inherent tension that exists within photography—it’s ability to both depict and deceive, concurrently.In my latest work, which I call Photographic Prevarications, space, planes, and objects themselves are presented in such a way as to underscore photography’s ability to tell untruths. In this way, I coax the viewer to question the nature of photography itself—by making them aware that they are looking at, and perceiving, a photograph, not looking at the subject matter of the photograph."
Richard Koenig (b. 1960) received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA fromIndiana University. He has taught art and photography courses at Kalamazoo College since the fall of 1998. Koenig has attended several artist residencies, including the American Academy in Rome and the Millay Colony for the Arts. In addition to his photographic work, his videos have been shown in the United States, Canada, France, Australia, Japan, and Yugoslavia.He is represented by Editions Fawbush in New York, and FLATFILEgalleries in Chicago.
Julie Farstad
June 7 – September 14, 2008
Opening Reception is Friday, June 6, 2008, 5:00 – 7:30
Farstad's paintings entice viewers with slick, shiny surfaces and meticulous chiaroscuro, and then suddenly repel them with the with excessive intensity of the subject and overall vastness of negative space.
In her work, Farstad is interested in looking at behavioral and visual strategies by which individuals, primarily girls, can question, subvert, or disrupt a dominant culture or authority. Specifically her work explores flirtation, passive aggression, and manipulation because they are methods by which power is destabilized by a sly inversion of the sweet or harmless.
Julie Farstad received a B.F.A. degree in painting from the University of Notre Dame and an M.F.A. degree in painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating summa cum laude from both institutions. She joined the Kansas City Art Institute painting faculty in 2005, and is primarily a painter but also works in photography, installation, watercolor, drawing and etching, as well as in collaboration with modern dance as an artist and set designer. Farstad has exhibited her work nationally, and most notably, has had several solo exhibitions of her work, most recently in March 2005 in New York at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, and in March 2007 in Chicago with Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, both of whom represent her work.
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