Press Release
Site and Insight:
Jan Dibbets,
Richard Long, Mary Miss
Senior & Shopmaker Gallery is pleased to present Site and Insight: Jan Dibbets, Richard Long, and Mary
Miss, an exhibition of drawings and photographic works by three artists with roots in the Conceptual
and Earth Movements of the 1970s. All employ photography, not as a final product, but mediated
with collage and drawing to transform views of the man-made and natural landscape. The works in
the show date from 1980 to 1996.
Jan Dibbets, (b. 1941, the Netherlands) influenced by the luminous interiors of Giotto and Vermeer,
presents views of architectural interiors pieced together from multiple photographic vantage points
and arranged in spiral or circular configurations, not unlike the sculptural forms of Richard Long, his
classmate at London’s St. Martin’s College of Art in the 1970s. Overlapping photos float against
white or color backgrounds, often with watercolor and graphite drawing that extends or delineates
the photographic image. Despite their seemingly analytic process, the collages provide elegantly
pictorial meditations on light and the ambiguity of space.
An important aspect of Mary Miss’s (b. 1944, New York) work are her collages of overlapping gelatin
silver prints, or “photo/drawings” in which several photographic views of a single structure or site
are jaggedly spliced together to form an altered whole. During her travels, Miss photographs
industrial and architectural sites, which serve as reference and memory of place that resonate in her
large outdoor works. As their emphasis on light and abstract pattern attests, the photo/drawings,
with their collapsed and expanded manipulations of space, convey the experience of a particular
place rather than strict documentation.
The experience of landscape is intensely physical for Richard Long (British, b. 1945), as it involves a
personal journey as he walks through remote landscapes in Britain and elsewhere. Nature provides
subject and source for the artist, and the notion of impermanence is an abiding principle in his wall
drawings and sculpture. Long’s epic walks, by definition ephemeral and temporal, are documented
photographically with the addition of words and maps, providing visual signs or memory of the
artist’s creation.
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10a.m- 6p.m.; Saturday, 11a.m.-6 p.m. For further information,
please contact Betsy Senior or Laurence Shopmaker, at 212-213-6767 or
gallery@seniorandshopmaker.com