RE:VIEW | a Group Exhibition June 11 - August 10, 2010 Opening Reception: Friday, June 11 (5-8 pm)
Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to announce RE:VIEW, a group exhibition featuring the work of fifteen photographers, opening Friday, June 11. An opening reception will be held from 5 – 8 p.m. and will mark the inauguration of our new Atrium space, located directly above our previous gallery at 7661 Girard Avenue in La Jolla.
Exploring a period from the late 1960s through the early 1980's, RE:VIEW is unified by each of the fifteen artists' unique ability to distill the essence of their own particular reality. Much of the work has been mined from estates and personal archives and thus the show represents images that have been both un-exhibited and under-exhibited, offering a fascinating second look at familiar cultural terrain.
Several works are concerned with architecture, examining the ways in which we carve up space with structure and form. Bevan Davies' studies of SoHo facades capture the measured beauty and civilized restrain of prewar urban planning while his work on the opposite coast, in Los Angeles, speaks to a stark aesthetic and negative space. Bill Arnold trains his focus on water towers and rooftop ventilation shafts in New York, elements that don't typically figure in our more romantic conceptions of urban sky. Edward Sturr finds a quiet geometry on dark Chicago streets and from Terry Wild, we see early examples of the "New Topographics" of L.A. sprawl.
Other works explore the shadows; the people and places on the fringe of our consciousness. Randal Levenson spent a decade traveling with sideshows, documenting the spectacle of such a transient existence and imbuing his subjects with an oddly dignified beauty; John Banasiak and Wayne Sorce haunt the second shift, surveying urban spaces and their denizens in the hours after dark; and Stephen Salmieri captures a sparsely populated Coney Island, seemingly already aware of its impending demise.
Also on exhibit will be works by Jack D. Teemer whose vibrant examinations of children at play and personal space reveal an element of the surreal coursing beneath low-income, Midwestern life; and Joanne Leonard, who, as a white woman living in Oakland in the sixties, gained an affecting insight into the daily existence of her neighbors.
Important works by Nacio Jan Brown, Wayne Lazorik, Oscar Bailey, Jay Boersma and Enrico Natali will also be on exhibit. RE:VIEW runs through July, 2010.