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March 10, 2007- April 7, 2007
Reception: March 10, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mitch Epstein
Sikkema, Jenkins & Co
530 W 22nd St Mitch Epstein Poca High School and Amos Plant, West Virginia (2004) |  Mitch Epstein Holly Beach, Louisiana (2006) |
Epstein is a pioneer of color photography, who began to redefine it as an art form nearly thirty years ago. Since then, he has developed a signature approach to his subjects. His images appear staged and spontaneous at the same time; they display, as critic Joanna Lehan put it, “a jaw-dropping talent for color composition”; and they sabotage their own formal perfection with troubling or provocative content. This content is layered and detailed, and offers multiple readings with repeated viewings.
With American Power, Epstein fully exploits his interest in American culture. This ongoing series examines energy usage and excess in the United States. He made these pictures on one to two-week forays near or at an energy source—what he calls “energy tourism.” The images implicate, but do not always directly reference fossil fuel, hydro-power, nuclear and wind power as they are used across the United States. Epstein has been stopped several times by the police and F.B.I. while photographing energy plants from a distance on a public sidewalk, and ordered to leave, although he was not trespassing. His unease with law enforcement agencies that appear, he says, “to be following corporate, not constitutional law,” per the Patriot Act, informs these photographs.
Epstein plays with the definition of American power, probing not just corporate power but the powers of sexuality and consumption. This new work embodies a complex amalgam of economic, sexual, social, environmental, and aesthetic politics. It has no didactic message, but poses various inquiries. These pictures investigate, for instance, the politics of Big Brother, the politics of human intimacy, and the value of making very large photographs. With American Power, the artist has ratcheted up his fascination with what America looks and feels like, and what it currently means as both a trope and a culture.
A mid-career survey of Epstein’s work will be at the Galerie Thomas Zander in Köln, Germany and the FOAM museum in Amsterdam in spring, 2007. His photographs are currently featured at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection, and in Shoot the Family, an Independent Curators International traveling exhibition.
Mitch Epstein’s photographs are in New York’s Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. His seven books include the recent retrospective monograph, Mitch Epstein: Work (Steidl, 2006), Recreation: American Photographs 1973-1988 (Steidl 2005), and Family Business (Steidl 2003), which received the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.
A Guggenheim Fellow, Epstein has also worked as a director, cinematographer, and production designer on several films, including Dad, Salaam Bombay!, and Mississippi Masala.
Art Reviews of American Power
| New York Times March 30, 2007 | Martha Schwendener | "...What is interesting, beyond the haunting, complicated beauty and precision of these images, is Mr. Epstein’s ability to merge what have long been considered opposing terms: photo-conceptualism and so-called documentary photography. He utilizes the supersize scale and saturated color of conceptualism, and his odd, implied narratives strongly recall the work of artists like Jeff Wall. Mr. Epstein’s images also share with Mr. Wall’s a look that is at once real and unreal — or, as people who witness a catastrophe say, “surreal.”..." |
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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