Philip Martin

Matt Connors, Robert Cumming and Florian Morlat

09 Jul - 06 Aug 2011

Installation view of Matt Connors, Robert Cumming and Florian Morlat
MATT CONNORS, ROBERT CUMMING AND FLORIAN MORLAT
9 July - 6 August, 2011

For this exhibition, Matt Connors and Florian Morlat invited Robert Cumming to exhibit the photographs he made in Los Angeles in the early and mid-1970s. Like many conceptual photographers, Cumming embraced the photograph as an objective tool to document his narrative conceptual impulses. However, his photographs are separated from those of his peers John Baldessari and William Wegman by his interest in the construction of the photograph itself, especially with regard to the picture plane. At his house and in his backyard, Cumming built elaborate set-ups that when photographed resolved themselves to present odd tableaux that were concise and open-ended, serious and funny, obvious and mysterious. The photographs he took resonate today with the same uncanny wit and authority they had when they were made. The exhibition, Matt Connors, Robert Cumming, Florian Morlat, presents an open-ended dialogue concerning the structure of art objects and how we look at them.

Matt Connors’ work is currently the subject of a two-person exhibition with Fergus Feehily at the Dallas Museum of Art. In the fall of 2011, Connors will have concurrent solo shows at Lüttgenmeijer and Veneklasen Verner (both Berlin). He has had solo exhibitions at Cherry and Martin (Los Angeles), Canada (New York) and The Breeder (Athens). His work has been reviewed in the New York Times and Artforum. Connors received his BFA from Bennington College in 1995 and his MFA from Yale University in 2006. He lives and works in New York.

Robert Cumming’s works are in the collections of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Baltimore Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Denver Art Museum; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu. Cumming lives and works in Massachusetts.

Florian Morlat will have a solo exhibition at Cherry and Martin in February 2012. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Galerie Ben Kaufmann (Berlin), Rowley Kennerk Gallery (Chicago) and Daniel Hug Gallery (Los Angeles). Significant group exhibitions include YBA, curated by Ali Subotnick, Mauritzio Cattelan and Olaf Metzel, Berlin Biennale (Berlin); Florian Morlat and Thaddeus Strode, Michael Hall Gallery (Vienna); Abstract Art Now—Strictly Geometrical?, Wilhelm-Hack Museum, (Ludwigshafen, Germany); and Home Show, Revisited, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (Santa Barbara). Morlat studied at the Akademie der bildenden Kuenste, Munich, received his diploma from the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf in 1996 and his MFA at University of California, Los Angeles in 1999. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
 

Tags: John Baldessari, Matt Connors, Fergus Feehily, Olaf Metzel, Florian Morlat, Thaddeus Strode, William Wegman