Duane Michals: Photographs from the Floating World
Pace/MacGill Gallery is pleased to present “Duane Michals: Photographs from the Floating World,” from December 4, 2008 through January 10, 2009.
Michals’s most recent series features images which assume the shape of traditional Eastern fans. The unconventional format and exhibition title references Ukiyo-e, the popular genre of woodblock prints produced during the Japanese Edo period’s “floating world” of sophisticated, urban culture (c. 1620-1867). In the mid to late 19th century, European artists such as Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Whistler reinterpreted the Ukiyo-e aesthetic, emulating its absence of perspective and flat areas of pronounced color.
More than a century later, Michals presents a modern and personal approach to this artistic tradition. Inspired by the work of Bonnard, Vasarely, Vermeer and Vuillard, Michals’s color photographs fuse Eastern and Western influences to present scenarios that blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality, and explore the enigmatic, floating nature of contemporary life. A monograph on the series is forthcoming from Steidl.
Please join us for a reception honoring the artist on Thursday, December 4, from 5:30 until 7:30.
32 EAST 57th STREET NYC 10022
T.212.759.7999
F.212.759.8964
www.pacemacgill.com