Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to announce Absolute Past, an installation of photo-based objects by Helga Landauer alongside nineteenth-century photographs of ruins. The exhibition opens Thursday 7 December 2017 with a reception at the gallery from 6:00-8:00 PM.
In Absolute Past, poet, filmmaker, and artist Helga Landauer presents small, temple-like boxes, all of which hold collodion-glass prints of digital photographs taken on the periphery of outdoor musical events in Vendée, France. These images draw the viewer’s eye to the surface of memory, challenging him or her to take on the artist’s experience of the “absolute past” — real-time events felt as if they cannot belong to the present.
Also on view is a selection of nineteenth-century photographs of architectural and cultural ruins by renowned photographers Roger Fenton (1819-1869), James Anderson (1813-1877), and Pascal Sébah (1823-1886), among others. Absolute Past explores the notions of depth and surface, the distance between the viewer and the receding present, and between memory and its sunlit ruins.
Absolute Past will be on view through Tuesday 2 January 2018. Please note that the gallery will be open by appointment from Tuesday 26 December through Saturday 30 December, and will reopen with regular hours on Tuesday 2 January.