RALPH GIBSON
Political Abstraction
10 September to 31 October 2015
On 10 September 2015, Mary Boone Gallery will open at its Fifth Avenue location Political Abstraction, an exhibition of new work by RALPH GIBSON.
Ralph Gibson has been photographing for more than fifty years, beginning his career by working alongside renowned photographers Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank. This experience impressed upon him the importance of developing a “visual signature” – a manner of depicting the world that, based on personal interests and perception, results in a unique visual style. Gibson achieved his remarkably consistent style early on: everyday objects isolated, strongly shadowed, and cropped so that they become potent and mysterious.
With Political Abstraction, Gibson complicates the viewer’s experience. The series consists of color and black and white photographic diptychs in which the two seemingly simple images are printed on a single sheet, with a wide margin separating and surrounding them. Correlations between the paired images are sought: a repeating shape, an echoed pattern, a similar shadow. Ultimately the calibrated tension between the two images overrides any accord. The subject of the work becomes not the individual images, or their juxtaposition, but the act of looking.
All of the images in the exhibition are included in the Lustrum Press monograph Ralph Gibson: Political Abstraction that will be published to coincide with the show.
The exhibition, at 745 Fifth Avenue, is on view through 31 October 2015. For further information, please contact Ron Warren at the Gallery, or visit our website www.maryboonegallery.com.
