Alchemy, 2007 chromogenic print, 40 3/4 x 30 inches JoAnn Verburg "Her pictures describe spaces and moments suspended in the reverie that precedes action. Like a Leyden jar, they are containers of potential." (John Szarkowski) Pace/MacGill Gallery is pleased to present "JoAnn Verburg," an exhibition of recent color work. The exhibition features over ten large landscape and portrait photographs and coincides with "JoAnn Verburg: Present Tense" on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York until early November. Verburg works extensively in Italy and features the Umbrian countryside in much of her work. She began photographing olive trees in Spoleto and the woods of Monteluco because of the many holm oaks there. The ancient Romans believed them to be sacred, the first trees created by God. Her pictures convey the ethereal quality of evening light and provide subtle commentary on the ephemeral nature of time as represented by the constantly shifting angles of the sun through the trees. Spoleto is also frequently the site of Verburg's portraits of her husband, the poet Jim Moore. Her images of Moore apply the intimacy of her landscape work to the representation of her husband within the close, personal frame of their shared environment as it is situated within the more expansive context of the world (and time) at large. Susan Kismaric, Curator of Photography at MoMA, explains: "...Verburg's work is lyrical and sensuous, and, most compellingly, it is grounded in an attention to human interaction - between the people in her pictures, and between her work and its audience - which keeps both artist and viewers perpetually approaching a threshold between searching and finding." Verburg's belief in photography's special ability to explore the passage of time originated during her years as a graduate student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. As a young photographer she pursued the subject when, in 1977, she and a small team embarked on the Rephotographic Survey Project and retraced the steps of the great nineteenth century landscape photographers of the American West such as Timothy O'Sullivan and William Henry Jackson. JoAnn Verburg (b. 1950, Summit, NJ) lives and works in St. Paul, MN and Spoleto, Italy. She received a B.A. in sociology from Ohio Wesleyan University and a M.F.A. in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Verburg has received numerous awards and honors including four McKnight Foundation grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work can be found in many notable museum collections such as: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Exhibition: September 6 - October 13, 2007 Gallery hours: Tues-Fri 9:30 am - 5:30 pm, Sat 10 - 6 pm Pace/MacGill Gallery 32 East 57th Street, 9th floor USA-New York, NY 10022 Telephone +1 212 759 7999 Fax +1 212 759 8964 Email info@pacemacgill.com www.pacemacgill.com |
|
 |
