mumok

Zoe Leonard

04 Dec 2009 - 07 Mar 2010

© Zoe Leonard
Frontal View, Geoffrey Beene Fashion Show, 1990, Silbergelatine-Abzug, Courtesy Tracy Williams Ltd., New York, und Galerie Gisela Capitain, Köln
ZOE LEONARD
Photography / Analogue
4 December 2009 - 7 March 2010

In her photographs the American artist and participant in two documentas, Zoe Leonard (*1961), practices a thoughtful ramble, a discerning gaze: in her mainly black and white photographs she is concerned with neither invention nor imagination but with a precise way of seeing and remembering. She sifts through nature and culture, cityscapes, landscapes and museum scapes looking for signs that inform us about the structure and conditions of nature and culture, about their contrasts, parallels, and mutual connections. In her photographs she shows the Niagara Falls, railway tracks as they make their wavy lines over the whole globe (as well as over maps) and anatomical models, vitrines and display windows in which she rediscovers the order of thoughts and remembering, the balance of photographic material and photographic. Leonard’s photographs are shown together with the frames around the negatives as well as traces of the photographic process such as dust or scratches which are retained. Thus the image support becomes a perceptible part of the photograph and its pictorial information is uncovered, as if at an archaeological excavation site, with all its differences in precision and depth. In this solo exhibition the MUMOK is presenting the first overview of Zoe Leonard’s artistic oeuvre by means of a large number of exemplary black and white photographs though colour photographs such as the series Analogue 1998 – 2007 will also be included.

The exhibition was conceived by Urs Stahel and Zoe Leonard and organised by the Fotomuseum Winterthur.
 

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