Barbara Probst / Benjamin Senior

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Barbara Probst | Project Room: Benjamin Senior

Opening Wednesday 25 September at 6 pm

Exhibition: 25 September - 9 November 2013
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 3 - 7 pm

Galleria Monica De Cardenas
Via Francesco Viganò 4
I - 20124 Milano
Tel +39 02 29010068
www.monicadecardenas.com
[email protected]

Barbara Probst

We are pleased to announce a solo show of recent works by Barbara Probst.

The works of Barbara Probst are always composed by a group of photographs. At first glance they appear mysteriously connected, yet without revealing their secret. Closer observation reveals that they all portray the same scene and have been taken in the same second, but from very different angles.

For Probst this fragmentation of the instant into a series of images is the tool for exploring the many ambiguities inherent to the photographic image. In her work the relationship of the photographic instant to reality is intensified in two distinct ways, whereby the captured moment acquires an almost unsettling quality: on the one hand, Probst abandons the single-eyed gaze of the camera and divides it into various points of view. On the other, she multiplies and diversifies the short moment of the shot. Thanks to a radio-controlled release system she can simultaneously trigger the shutters of several cameras pointed at the same event or subject from different angles and various distances. From each angle the gaze of the camera gives us a different view of the same reality, thus revealing all its subjectivity.

At the same time Probst uses this method to explore photographic conventions and typologies such as reportage, surveillance, portrait, fashion and the cinematic image, as well as the condition of these images in our memory and consciousness. The contexts are often photographic sets or outdoor locations like Central Park, streets in New York City or the rooftops of skyscrapers. In many pictures one of the cameras can be glimpsed, thus becoming an actor in the scene.

Probst's works call on the viewer to enact critical thinking and viewing, and they do so with a finely tuned mix of seriousness and humor. Her images question the role of the viewer and the influence of the different interpretations that arise in confronting photographic images.

For the first time in this exhibition Probst will present two “still lives” depicting objects like fruit, mushrooms, bottles and vases; but time and motion remain present in the form of soap bubbles and a falling apple that in the photograph will remain for ever still.

Barbara Probst was born in 1964 in Munich, Germany; she lives and works in New York and Munich. Her work was shown at MoMa New York in the 2006 “New Photography” exhibition. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, among others 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; in 2008 at Domaine de Kerguehennec, Bignan, France and The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin; in 2009 at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh and Kunstverein Oldenburg in Germany. In 2007, Steidl published an extensive monograph of her work: Barbara Probst: Exposures.

Upcoming she will have a solo exhibition at The National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen opening on the 3rd of October 2013, that will be accompanied by a new publication. The exhibition will travel to the Centre Pasqu’Art in Bienne in Switzerland in February 2014.

Project room: Benjamin Senior

We are pleased to announce the first exhibition by British painter Benjamin Senior in Italy.

Senior’s figurative egg tempera paintings are constructed with a formal play of rhythms, geometry, false symmetries and colour interactions. The artist uses the subject of leisurely exercise as a springboard for these formal journeys. The regimented nature of the swimming club, the yoga class or the morning run offer a plausible context in which the figure can be repeated and geometricized. Senior’s work references the abstracted body in the European art and design of the 1920’s and 1930’s seen in the paintings of Fernand Leger and Balthus and the choreography of Busby Berkeley. This period of art history enacts a narrative of the object overthrowing the subject and geometric forces displacing the social. Applying this historicized lens to the contemporary culture of health and exercise, Senior touches upon binaries of the natural and the unnatural, the collective and the individual, the healthy and the unhealthy.

Benjamin Senior was born in 1982 and he lives in London. He received his BA at Wimbledon School of Art in 2004, and his MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2010. He held solo exhibitions at Bolte Lang, Zurich in 2012 and at James Fuentes in New York in 2013. In May Bolte Lang presented a solo exhibition of his work in the Discoveries section at Art Basel Hong Kong. In October 2013 he will have a solo show at Studio Voltaire in London. Residencies and awards include Kingsgate Workshops Trust Residency 2011 - 2012 and the Gordon Luton Prize for Painting, 2010.