Melas Papadopoulos

Michele Abeles

23 May - 29 Jun 2013

MICHELE ABELES
Αγγλικά γιά Γραμματείς
23 May - 29 June 2013

Superposition is a good way to enter these pictures. A fundamental principle of quantum mechanics, it holds that a physical system exists in all its theoretically possible states simultaneously. Schroedinger’s Cat, the famous thought experiment formulated by Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger in 1935 proposes a scenario in which a cat placed in a sealed box together with a flask of poison and a radioactive trigger is in an in-between state, both dead and alive. What arises as an observer opens the box is the question of when precisely quantum indeterminacy ends and reality collapses into one eventuality or the other.
Michele Abeles- who has based her triptych Coaches, 2013 on Schroedinger’s cat- creates images that are in constant flux. Each photograph and the entire exhibition might be described as existing in quantum states, that is with elements existing between one image and the next. Aspects migrate not only from picture plane to picture plane within a single piece, but also through the physical space that separates works.
Abeles’s latest entanglements with contemporary modes of viewing and using images is a continuation of her previous concerns; in these digital composites, we recognize parts recycled from earlier photographs- a torso, a bottle, a patterned fabric- just as we could see objects moving, being added to, or subtracted from picture to picture in the in-camera compositions she produced in around 2010.
Αγγλικά γιά Γραμματείς opens 4 days after the close of her New York solo show of the same title, English for Secretaries. With this soft doppelganger of an exhibition in Athens, Abeles reflects on simultaneity, context, transmission, and translation. Her decision to keep the title of the new show in Greek highlights the sensory impact of language, mimicking the deformations that occur when words and images transit virtual and physical geographies.
Michele Abeles lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions include English for Secretaries, 47 Canal, New York (solo); April, Sadie Coles; New Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Empire State.
New York Art Now, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. Her work has been featured in Aperture, Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Frieze, Interview, and Kaleidoscope, among others. Abeles’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
 

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