This exhibition attempts to describe some portion of the relationship of figuration, realism and photography. In different moments since modernism representation has been described as conveying an uncontrollable surplus that at times shatters arts ability to convey the unrepresentable. It was thought at the beginning of the 20th century that abstraction might reveal an aesthetic mode capable of expressing more about our enhanced presence and diminished existences as humans. It has been imagined that art built on non-resemblance could perhaps exceed thought and call into question the validity of knowledge derived mostly from images.

At the same time many artists and specifically photographers intensified their approaches to an art focused on observation, figuration and resemblance. Artists like Hannah Collins, Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze), Miroslav Tischy, Rineke Dijkstra and Jacqueline de Jong have all differently employed a kind of objectivity that moves beyond the visible towards a visceral re-figuration of the seen and unseen. This exhibition will attempt to show that that resemblance almost certainly carries the promise of the unknowable and or the unrepresentable in plain sight. This pursuit sought a sublime path around a ‘straight forward re-telling’ and energized abstract art to be more than a witness.

Hannah Collins, born in London in 1956, lived and worked in Barcelona from 1989 to 2010, and today lives between London and Almeria, Spain. Collins’ oeuvre features a broad array of photography, film, written text, as well as books, however; she is best known for her works in film and photography. Hannah’s work intends to draw attention to the historical and social frameworks that humanity moves through. Her work has been described as quietly revealing the complexities of life and the ways in which we relate to the world around us through vision and memory.

Jacqueline de Jong, born in 1939, is a Dutch painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. Her early life was spent in Amsterdam and Paris. As an artist working in Paris she became involved with the Situationist movement and many of her paintings and prints from the 1970’s exhibit her tendencies towards figurative drawing, collage and urbanity.

Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in the Piedmont region of Italy in 1933. Before turning his attention to his own art, Pistoletto was a painting restorer in Turin. In his own work, Michelangelo is associated with the Arte Povera movement due to the manner in which he employs every day materials in his art. His sculpture, Venus in the Rags, made in 1967, was the the work that cemented his association the the Arte Povera movement. Pistoletto’s mirror paintings, one of which is exhibited here, are an important aspect of his oeuvre.

Giulio Paolini is an Italian artist living and working in Turin, Italy. He is linked to the Arte Povera movement whose practice explores the relationship between artist and object. Unlike many of his peers, Paolini often directly cites art of the past as a major influence and contributing subject in his works. This pronounced use of art history serves to highlight notions about the connectedness of past and present, as well as replication and originality.

Miroslav Tichy was born in Kyjov, Czechoslavakia. He lived and worked there throughout most of his life. After studying at the Prague Academy of Fine arts, in the 1960’s, he began his career in photography. Tichy is best known for his voyeuristic images, taken on cameras which he manufactured himself using materials such as cardboard, glass lenses toothpaste, and rubber bands. His photographs are often imperfect, blurred or damaged by over exposure, adding to their improvisational quality and analog aesthetic.

Wols, originally Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, was a German multi-disciplinary artist, who created most of his art in France. He began his artistic career with photography in the mid 1920s after receiving a still camera as a gift. During and after the Second World War he turned to painting and drawing. Unfortunately, Wols’ work was largely unrecognized throughout his life, yet today is considered a pioneer of abstraction and one of the most influential artists of the Taschisme movement.

Rineke Dijkstra lives and works in Amsterdam. Dijkstra often concentrates her photographs into series and focuses on portraiture. Her work exposes the vulnerability of individuals and communities of people. Many of her subjects are mothers, adolescents, and teenagers, as well as soldiers and children.

German artist Thomas Ruff aims his work at re-evaluating the beholders relationship to photography. His photographs create a more fluid and conceptual relationship to subject through their stylistic ambiguity. The blurring of his photographs challenges the hierarchies within photography and alludes to sexual introspection.

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