September 15, 2009–May 16, 2010
Photographs are often perceived as transparent windows onto a three-dimensional world. Yet photographs also have their own material presence as physical objects. Contemporary artists who exploit this apparent contradiction between photograph as window and photograph as object are featured in Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 15, 2009, through May 16, 2010. The exhibition presents 30 works that play with the inherent tension between the flatness of the photograph and the often lifelike illusion of depth.
Surface Tension highlights the ways in which artists use photographic and multi-media techniques to direct our attention to the physical surface of the photograph. Among the works featured are photographs that have been purposely scratched, burned, or painted on, as well as photograms made by placing objects directly on top of a sheet of photographic paper. The exhibition features several recent acquisitions and other contemporary photographs never before shown at the Metropolitan Museum. Presented in the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, Surface Tension is drawn entirely from the permanent collection.
One of the most direct ways to draw the viewer's gaze to the two-dimensional aspect of a photograph is to physically transform the surface of the paper. Gerhard Richter, who is known for his paintings based on photographs, has created a number of small works in which he squeezed paint directly onto his own color photographs. For the two works included in Surface Tension, Richter dragged a squeegee of oil paint across the surface of the photographs, resulting in an abstract image on top of a representational image. Wolfgang Tillmans manipulated the photographic paper during the developing process to create I don't want to get over you (2000), a recent addition to the Museum's collection. This abstract work has the same high-key color and improvisational style as his portraits and still lifes, but Tillmans also plays with the depth of the image by adding a bright green stroke of color that seems to float above the background. Marco Breuer works without a camera to test the limits of the medium of photography. In Spin (C-823), 2008, also a new acquisition by the Museum, the artist placed a sheet of exposed photographic paper on a record turntable so that the phonograph needle would scratch through the layers of emulsion. The result is a pattern of deep black concentric circles alternating with delicately colored grooves that have been cut into the surface.
A more common technique of cameraless photography is the photogram, whose boldly graphic effects belie the window-like quality of conventional photographs. Working with cyanotype, one of the earliest photographic processes, Christian Marclay created a photogram in which objects placed on light-sensitive paper are translated into flat white shapes against a deep blue background. For Memento (Soul II Soul), Marclay cracked open commercial cassette tapes and scattered the unspooled audiotape in droopy skeins across the surface of the image. A convergence of audio and visual materials, this recently acquired wall-size work from 2008 is a memento mori for the antiquated media of the cyanotype and the cassette tape. In a very different photogram technique, Adam Fuss creates situations in which unpredictable actions help to generate his images, as in the untitled photogram from 1997 shown for the first time at the Museum in this exhibition. For this large-scale work, Fuss let loose several snakes on a large sheet of photographic paper dusted with talcum powder. The movement of the snakes "drew" the image by shifting the powder into surprisingly delicate fan-shaped forms, which were revealed when the paper was exposed to light.
In some cases, artists call attention to the physicality of the image surface by photographing two-dimensional subjects parallel to the picture plane. Tim Davis photographs works of art in museums, but he positions his camera at a slight angle to emphasize the reflective glare of the lighting, thus obscuring the paintings' details. In Davis's 2003 photograph of Thomas Eakins's painting The Oarsman (Yale University Art Gallery), a barely visible sculler seems to dissolve into a shimmering veil of light. To further the confusion, Davis's photograph is printed at the same size as his original subject. This will be the first time that the work is shown at the Museum. Miles Coolidge's Accident Investigation Site (2005) also reproduces his subject life-size: 22 feet in length and 7½ feet in height. Coolidge photographed a section of the shoulder of a Los Angeles highway piece by piece and then assembled the images digitally to create a single, massive print. The photograph recreates the surface of the roadside site with unnerving precision and seemingly infinite detail.
Also featured in Surface Tension are recently acquired works by Chris McCaw and Eileen Quinlan, as well as a video by Ann Hamilton and contemporary photographs by Andrew Bush, Lee Friedlander, Tom Friedman, Pertti Kekarainen, Anselm Kiefer, Jungjin Lee, Daido Moriyama, Vik Muniz, Giuseppe Penone, Miguel Rio Branco, Lucas Samaras, and Frederick Sommer.
In addition, the exhibition will include historical examples by Anna Atkins, Robert Demachy, Walker Evans, Roger Fenton, and Aaron Siskind. These photographs, made between 1843 and 1950, likewise exploit the tension between the surface of the paper and the photographic subjects.
Surface Tension is organized by Mia Fineman, Senior Research Associate in the Department of Photographs.
The exhibition will be featured on the Museum's website at www.metmuseum.org.
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September 18, 2009
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