Seeing Spaces: Four Photographers Viewing Architecture

JL Modern

324 Worth Avenue

NOVEMBER 1, 2018 – DECEMBER 7, 2018

Beginning over a century ago, pioneers of photography began to examine and represent architecture as an idea and rich subject, creating a niche in the field of photography that explores the profound relationships we have to our three-dimensional surroundings, structures we dwell and work in, as well as spaces developed for cultural use.

Seeing Spaces profiles the work of four contemporary photographers who treat various aspects of architecture to investigate atmosphere, memory, and narrative. These artists expand photography’s static nature, compressing and articulating dimensionality through their innovative ways of seeing while also constructing photographic space.

In this exhibition, Michael Massaia investigates the material qualities of film photography through a dedicated darkroom study of the medium’s possibilities with light and shadow, exploring public spaces during the half-light before dawn. Massimo Listri captures the grandeur of interior spaces, carefully inspecting imposing and harmonious architecture in a manner connected to the principles of the Renaissance. Andre Lichtenberg creates an abstract, elaborate, and linear tableau of a skyscape of architecture by making a composite final photograph, knitting together dozens of smaller detail shots. The images are analogous to a puzzle or an exercise in memory, akin to the meticulous discipline of a draftsman, rediscovering the pictorial character of a city. Karen Knorr inspired by Conceptual art and Magical Realism, presents the viewer with the illusion of animals inside elaborate and luxuriant interiors. Knorr’s work conjures up the symbolism of parables and mythologies; anthropomorphic tales of morality and cultural significance that create a subtext as individual tales for each image.

This exhibition, in conjunction with the opening of JL Modern Gallery, highlights a yearning to see anew and presents a fresh and new space that will showcase rotating contemporary photography. Just as JL Modern is our new take on the architecture of a fine art photography gallery, Seeing Spaces investigates place, creating and transforming the narratives of what we see into images that showcase the aesthetic and intellectual allure of contemporary architectural photography.

Andre Lichtenberg

Massimo Listri

Michael Massaia

Karen Knorr