BOCA RATON, FLA.- The Boca Raton Museum of Art’s newly created Contemporary Photography Forum is established to present the work of emerging to mid-career artists working in the medium of photography. The inaugural exhibition is on view through April 8, 2018 and includes the work of Daniel Gordon, Paul Kneale, and Florian Maier-Aichen. This exhibition considers photography’s influential role in contemporary art and also aims to build upon the significant collection of 1,600 historical photographs in the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s collection.
“The medium of photography has shifted with the advent of new technologies,” says Assistant Curator Lanya Snyder, who organized Contemporary Photography Forum. “While it is the foundation for the work in this exhibition, these artists use the process merely as a starting point.” Examining the evolution of image culture that has taken place over the last 10 years, these works ask how digital innovations (including the introduction of the smartphone and the selfie) and the inflated circulation of photography have impacted the conversation surrounding photography within a fine-art context.
The Museum’s executive director, Irvin Lippman, notes that any dialogue examining the present must also take heed of the past, writing that “the Pictorialists...over a century ago sought to unhinge photography from mechanical verisimilitude and into a more “painterly” expression." The aesthetic transition currently taking place in fine art photography can be traced back more than 100 years, but the past decade (if not half-decade) has accelerated the change at an rapid rate with works by artists like Gordon, Kneale, and Maier-Aichen.
Representational photography remained dominant until the past few decades, when the birth of digital photography and the tools that accompany it — such as Photoshop, scanners and Inkjet printers — engendered a new generation of artists. Working between traditional photographic methods and altered digital techniques, collectively the exhibition explores the visual territory between photography and painting. Reflecting ongoing dialogues surrounding the nature and progression of contemporary photography, this forum acts as a conversation between the participating artists. At its core, the exhibition serves to both substantiate and deepen the notion of the transcendent form and vital impact of photography today.
A fully-illustrated catalogue designed by Studio LHOOQ accompanies this exhibition as will a full roster of related photography talks and other events.
Daniel Gordon (b. 1980 Brooklyn, NY) holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Yale School of Art. Recent solo exhibitions include Bolte Lang, Zürich; The Foam Museum, Amsterdam; and Wallspace, New York. He has participated in several major exhibitions, including Greater New York, MoMA P.S. 1, Queens (2010) and New Photography Series, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009). His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Gordon lives and works in New York.
Paul Kneale (b. 1986 Brantford, Canada) received a BA in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art (London). His works have been included in the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art 2016 and are part of private collections such as the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, and the Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy. He has taught at the Zurich University of Art and has contributed to publications including Frieze and Spike magazines. He is also the author of the short story Ex Oriente Lux and the eBook New Abject, a response to Julia Kristeva’s 1980 text Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. He lives and works in Canada and London.
Florian Maier-Aichen (b. 1973 Stuttgart, Germany) studied at the School of Photography and Film, University for Gothenburg, Sweden, and the University of Essen, Germany, before earning his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Notable press includes Artforum, Art in America, and Flash Art. His work is included in the public collections of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Denver Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in Germany and Los Angeles.
