Richard Misrach
04 May - 29 Jun 2013
RICHARD MISRACH
On the Beach, 2.0
4 May – 29 June 2013
NEW YORK, May 2, 2013 — Pace and Pace/MacGill Gallery are pleased to present On The Beach 2.0, an exhibition of new large-scale photographs by Richard Misrach. The exhibition will be on view at 510 West 25th Street from May 4 through June 29, 2013. An opening reception will be held on Friday, May 3 from 6 to 8 PM.
Ten years from the inception of his On the Beach series, first exhibited at Pace in 2004, Misrach is revisiting the same site to create a dynamic dialogue with the earlier work. Shooting from a hotel balcony in Hawaii, Misrach documents the sea’s changes in color and energy, as well as the humans who enter the ocean’s immensity to float, swim, surf, perform, and sometimes curl up at its edge. While Misrach spent most of his career working with a slow and cumbersome 8x10 inch view-camera, his shift to digital equipment now affords him the speed necessary to capture a swimmer in mid-stroke or to arrest the ebb and flow of a waning tide. With this new technology, Misrach is able to work faster, shoot in adverse conditions and make photographs in lower light with higher definition. The large-scale, sharply detailed image of a woman performing a headstand on a moving surfboard, for example, could not have been done with this kind of fidelity before.
The title of the series, On the Beach 2.0, alludes to the fact that these photographs are grounded in their technological moment in time, as do the individual titles, which refer to the date and exact minute of each shot. Conversely, parts of this body of work are the closest Misrach has come to portraiture in several decades. Although faces are often obscured by a towel or magazine, many of the images can be considered gestural portraits. As digital technology allows for intimate views of beach goers taken from afar, a certain tension remains at play throughout the series between simple observation and surveillance.
Over the past forty years Misrach has grappled with the same concerns: our environment and our place within it. Desert Cantos, his epic project on the American West, is perhaps his best-known work. The depredations of the oil industry can be found in his recently published Petrochemical America, while the remnants of nature's fury are showcased in Misrach's Katrina photographs, Destroy This Memory. On the Beach 2.0 celebrates a different perspective, one in which man exists in harmony with the elements.
Richard Misrach (b. 1949, Los Angeles) received a B.A. in 1971 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1973, 1977, 1984, 1992), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1979), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for a Publication (1988), the Kulturpreis for Lifetime Achievement in Photography from the German Society of Photography (2002), and the Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art Photography (2008).
Misrach’s photographs have been the subject of numerous exhibitions and can be found in over 50 museum collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Monographs of his work include: Telegraph 3 A.M.: The Street People of Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley (1974); Desert Cantos (1987); Bravo 20: The Bombing of the American West (1990); Violent Legacies: Three Cantos (1992); Crimes and Splendors: The Desert Cantos of Richard Misrach (1996); The Sky Book (2000); Richard Misrach: Golden Gate (2001); Pictures of Paintings (2002); Chronologies (2005); On the Beach (2007); Destroy This Memory (2010); Petrochemical America (2012); Golden Gate (2012); and 11.21.11 5:40pm (2013).
Misrach lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works predominantly throughout the American West. He has been represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery since 2002.
On the Beach, 2.0
4 May – 29 June 2013
NEW YORK, May 2, 2013 — Pace and Pace/MacGill Gallery are pleased to present On The Beach 2.0, an exhibition of new large-scale photographs by Richard Misrach. The exhibition will be on view at 510 West 25th Street from May 4 through June 29, 2013. An opening reception will be held on Friday, May 3 from 6 to 8 PM.
Ten years from the inception of his On the Beach series, first exhibited at Pace in 2004, Misrach is revisiting the same site to create a dynamic dialogue with the earlier work. Shooting from a hotel balcony in Hawaii, Misrach documents the sea’s changes in color and energy, as well as the humans who enter the ocean’s immensity to float, swim, surf, perform, and sometimes curl up at its edge. While Misrach spent most of his career working with a slow and cumbersome 8x10 inch view-camera, his shift to digital equipment now affords him the speed necessary to capture a swimmer in mid-stroke or to arrest the ebb and flow of a waning tide. With this new technology, Misrach is able to work faster, shoot in adverse conditions and make photographs in lower light with higher definition. The large-scale, sharply detailed image of a woman performing a headstand on a moving surfboard, for example, could not have been done with this kind of fidelity before.
The title of the series, On the Beach 2.0, alludes to the fact that these photographs are grounded in their technological moment in time, as do the individual titles, which refer to the date and exact minute of each shot. Conversely, parts of this body of work are the closest Misrach has come to portraiture in several decades. Although faces are often obscured by a towel or magazine, many of the images can be considered gestural portraits. As digital technology allows for intimate views of beach goers taken from afar, a certain tension remains at play throughout the series between simple observation and surveillance.
Over the past forty years Misrach has grappled with the same concerns: our environment and our place within it. Desert Cantos, his epic project on the American West, is perhaps his best-known work. The depredations of the oil industry can be found in his recently published Petrochemical America, while the remnants of nature's fury are showcased in Misrach's Katrina photographs, Destroy This Memory. On the Beach 2.0 celebrates a different perspective, one in which man exists in harmony with the elements.
Richard Misrach (b. 1949, Los Angeles) received a B.A. in 1971 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1973, 1977, 1984, 1992), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1979), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for a Publication (1988), the Kulturpreis for Lifetime Achievement in Photography from the German Society of Photography (2002), and the Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art Photography (2008).
Misrach’s photographs have been the subject of numerous exhibitions and can be found in over 50 museum collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Monographs of his work include: Telegraph 3 A.M.: The Street People of Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley (1974); Desert Cantos (1987); Bravo 20: The Bombing of the American West (1990); Violent Legacies: Three Cantos (1992); Crimes and Splendors: The Desert Cantos of Richard Misrach (1996); The Sky Book (2000); Richard Misrach: Golden Gate (2001); Pictures of Paintings (2002); Chronologies (2005); On the Beach (2007); Destroy This Memory (2010); Petrochemical America (2012); Golden Gate (2012); and 11.21.11 5:40pm (2013).
Misrach lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works predominantly throughout the American West. He has been represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery since 2002.