SUMMER @ The FLAG Art Foundation

JUNE 30 - SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

The FLAG Art Foundation presents three solo exhibitions by contemporary artists Noriko Ambe, Jennifer Dalton, and Robert Lazzarini, and The Magnum Mark: Selections from the Magnum Photos Archive.

Noriko Ambe: ARTIST BOOKS, Linear-Actions Cutting Project

The solo exhibition of New York-based artist Noriko Ambe is comprised of a specific selection of artist books that were the result of an ongoing exploration by the artist. Utilizing twenty art monographs from artists such as Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, and Tom Friedman, Ambe has meticulously cut hundreds of varying shapes and lines into each page of each book, creating intricately controlled biomorphic and sculptural fissures. Immersing herself in the body of work encompassed by each monograph, Ambe evaluated the nature of her connection with each artist and specific works—this aided in her decision of what to subtract and what to reveal.

Noriko Ambe (b. 1967, Saitama, Japan) is an artist living and working in New York, NY. Ambe work has been exhibited internationally and is featured in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; CAC–The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; SCAI The BATHHOUSE, Tokyo, Japan; among others. She has participated in the Art Omi International residency (2005) and LMCC, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Work Space program (2004-5). In 2007 she was the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Ambe recently exhibited ARTIST BOOKS, Linear-Actions Cutting Project at the Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin, TX.

Jennifer Dalton: MAKING SENSE

Like an archaeologist of the present-day, Jennifer Dalton collects and examines cultural information, organizes and evaluates this information according to her own personal criteria, and then displays her findings. These displays take the form of drawings, photographs or sculptural installations consisting of assembled or handmade objects. In Making Sense, she analyzes the cultural institutions Facebook, The New Yorker, and Artforum, testing her own biases and hypotheses and applying taxonomies where they might not be expected. Her process is quasi-scientific, at the intersection where apparently objective data encounters low-tech and personal methods and conclusions.

Jennifer Dalton (b. 1967) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Dalton earned a BA in Fine Art from UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, and an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. She received a Pollock/Krasner Foundation grant in 2002 and a Smack Mellon Studio Fellowship for 2005-2006; she has spent time in residence at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Millay Colony. Her work has been the subject of reviews and articles in publications including Artforum, ArtNEWS, Art + Auction, Art in America, Flash Art, New York Magazine, Modern Painters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, among others. Dalton’s work has recently been exhibited at Winkleman Gallery, New York, NY; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; The Teaching Gallery at Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, NY; and Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.

Robert Lazzarini: guns, knives, brass knuckles

guns, knives, brass knuckles is an installation and exhibition of sculpture by New York–based artist Robert Lazzarini. All of Lazzarini’s sculptures of the past decade begin with what the artist calls a “normative object.” The works in the exhibition start with .38 Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver, a set of common kitchen knives (chefs, paring, pruning, cleaver, etc.) and a unembellished pair of brass knuckles. These objects are then subjected to mathematical distortions and fabricated out of the materials that are original to the objects themselves: blued carbon steel and walnut for guns, stainless steel, wood and plastic for knives; and yellow brass for brass knuckles.

The combination of these distortions with the lack of any conventionally artistic “material translation” (e.g. a car out of cardboard; flesh out of marble) renders these objects familiar yet strange and difficult, quite literally, to grasp. In canting the gallery’s walls, Lazzarini extends the dislocation exercised on his objects to the space of their display. This altered environment not only further subjects one’s perceptions to a kind of visual slippage, but also connects Lazzarini to a lineage of artists, from Richard Serra to Alberto Giacometti, distinctly concerned with processes of perception and visual abstraction.

Robert Lazzarini (b. 1965, Denville NJ) is an artist living and working in New York, NY. Lazzarini has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in venues such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Wadsworth Atheneum, The Tapei Museum of Contemporary Art, The Deste Foundation, and The Kunsthalle Berne. Some permanent collections include The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC, The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, and Davidson College, Davidson, NC. Lazzarini recently exhibited guns, knives, brass knuckles at the Aldrich Museum of Art, CT and at Honor Fraser Gallery, LA. He has a forthcoming exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art Fort Worth, TX.

The Magnum Mark: Selections from the Magnum Photos Archive

The signature styles of Magnum’s photographers and their commitment to documenting the world have brought each of them individual acclaim. But it is their collective and its archive, with its wealth of iconic images, that have guaranteed their influence on 20th and early 21st century visual culture. As digital technology usurps analogue, in both the taking and distribution of photographic work, the physical print archive, once at the heart of Magnum’s business, has taken on a new role as a resource for scholarship and exhibition. Concurrently, the market value of the photographic print as object, as well as image, grows.

This exhibition sets out to celebrate the legacy of Magnum’s print archive, uncovering the processes behind traditional, manual, image dissemination, interpreting the mysterious marks on the back of press prints and demonstrating the craft of printing Magnum’s famous photographs. It also looks to our digital future, in which technological innovation and the world wide web have created exciting new models to deliver, and re-interpret Magnum’s photography.

Featured within the exhibition will be previously unseen press prints, darkroom “print maps,” original contact sheets and additional ephemera from Magnum’s New York archive alongside a new media component.

Magnum Photos, founded by the forefathers of documentary photography—Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David “Chim” Seymour, and George Rodger—is a photographic co-operative of great diversity and distinction owned by its photographer-members. Since its inception in 1947, Magnum’s photographers collectively have chronicled the most significant historical and cultural milestones of the 20th Century. Today, through its offices in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, Magnum provides photographs to the media, publishers, advertising agencies, galleries, and museums across the world. Its collections also form the basis of numerous exhibitions, multimedia presentations, and books.

Download Exhibition Press