NEW YORK, NY.- Laurence Miller Gallery presents WET, a group show featuring over 40 works by more than 25 artists/photographers.
Why WET? The average adult human body is 60% water. Ocean covers 71% of the earths surface. The 2011 tsunami in Japan. Hurricane Sandy.
Though more humorous in tone than apocalyptic, WET offers more than 30 ways to consider our relationship to water. The earliest piece in the show from 1887 by Eadweard Muybridge, Woman pouring a bucket of water over another woman, raises many questions, but provides very few answers. Alfred Stieglitzs classic Steerage from 1907 reveals the drama and hardships facing immigrants from Europe who crossed the Atlantic to find a better life in the US. However, they are not arriving at Ellis Island but in fact are on their way back, having been denied entry for medical and other reasons.
Helen Levitt is represented by four works, including her classic shot of a woman carrying milk bottles, as well as a Jewish dairy sign depicting a woman milking a cow, and a childs drawing of an imagined 5 cent soda. From Ray Metzker, a footprint in the sand at Atlantic City, from Garry Winogrand a cowboy being licked by a steer. From Mauro Altamura, baseball umpires killing time during a rain delay, from Burk Uzzle a man contemplating a fish. And from Nina Katchadourian, her video Mystic Shark, as she tries to implant sharks teeth into her mouth. Perhaps we should have called the show JAWS.
Also included will be Linda Connor, Peter Bialobrzeski, Fan Ho, Dodo Jin Ming, Simone Rosenbauer, Harold Edgerton, Fred Herzog, Joe Maloney, and more.