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The Waterfall Project + site specific Las Vegas

November 1, 2007- December 22, 2007

Reception: November 1, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Olivo Barbieri

Yancey Richardson Gallery

535 W 22nd St

The Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present The Waterfall Project, an exhibition of new color photographs by Italian artist Olivo Barbieri. Made at the sites of four of the world's largest waterfalls, The Waterfall Project examines the dichotomy of the waterfall as a symbol of natural unspoiled paradise and its reality as an artificially controlled spectacle packaged for the consumption of viewers. The subjects for The Waterfall Project are each located on a different continent and include Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe; Iguazu, bordering Argentina and Brazil; Khone Papeng, on the border of Laos and Cambodia; and Niagara Falls, located between the United States and Canada.

In his previous site specific_ series, made in Rome, Las Vegas and Shanghai, Barbieri explored concepts of scale and idealism in urban spaces. In The Waterfall Project Barbieri extends these concepts to waterfalls as edifices of nature rather than man. In discussing the project, Barbieri states: "In western and eastern cultures alike, one finds an abundance of historical images of waterfalls as representations of fantastical places of utopian life. In a world of global tourism, where an "uncontaminated" nature confronts international borders, what remains of the mythological nature of these places?"

In recent years Barbieri has photographed from a helicopter using a large-format camera and a tilt and shift lens. Whereas his views of the celebrated structures of cities appear strangely miniaturized and toy-like, in The Waterfall Project, Barbieri's subjects feel vast, powerful and primordial. In Iguazu, Argentina/Brazil, 2007, people appear as small, cartoon-like figures grouped tightly together on an observation platform, as if viewing a dangerous creature from a safe distance. Other images range from an idyllic mist-laden vision of a seemingly undiscovered cataract to depictions of the waterfall as an ancient wellspring of life, combining elements of the terrible and the beautiful.

In conjunction with The Waterfall Project, Barbieri's recent work in Las Vegas comments ironically on man's ambition to shape the natural landscape. In site specific_Las Vegas'07, Barbieri focused on those aspects of this artificially built environment, such as a verdant golf course and a lavishly over-scaled hotel pool, inhospitable desert landscape of Las Vegas. The final image in the exhibition, a graveyard of abandoned neon signs featuring words such as "Treasury" and "Modern" is a pointed reminder of the temporal nature of man's built environment.

A participant in the 1993, 1995 and 1997 Venice Biennials, Barbieri's films and photographs have been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Tate Modern, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Hayward Gallery, the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the International Center of Photography, New York. In addition, his films have been selected for prestigious film festivals including the Sundance Festival, the San Francisco Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival among many others. Site specific_NEW YORK 07, Barbieri's most recent project, was the subject of an exhibition in conjunction with the annual Festival of Philosophy in Modena, Italy and published as a monograph, a limited number of which are available at the gallery.

Books and DVDs related to artists in this show

Location   Gallery Yancey Richardson Gallery Address 535 W 22nd St, 3rd Fl New York (Chelsea) NY, 10011 United States Phone 646-230-9610 Fax 646-230-6131 Hours Tue-Sat 10-6 Nearby: All 10 galleries at 535 W 22nd St

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