AIPAD Reflections
Spiffy and spacious, what a delight to return to the Park Armory to meander among 77 galleries and garner a reading on photography now. My favorite encounter was the celebration of Carla Williams in her solo exhibition at Higher Pictures, it was as if the confident self-portraits sang from all three walls. On the heels of winning the Aperture Paris Photo First Photobook Award for her monograph, Tender, I applaud each amplification of this generous and humble artist's work. Her bold explorations of her burgeoning sense of self in early adulthood have much to impart and inspire. Learning of the institutional acquisition of this work pleases my gender parity-seeking heart.
Meeting British photographer Sharon Walters and being introduced to her innovative art exhibited at Hacklebury was another treat. Walters’ crafts magic with a hand-held scalpel (what Americans refer to as an Exacto knife) and allows her creative process to lead her forward. With precision and purpose she explores tools and finishing options that serve her intentions. Her clarity and commitment to concept development is Concept Aware® in action.
Encountering the kinetic eye of Spanish photographer Txema Yeste at Staley Wise was a thrill. In Fuerteventura, 2024 his daring use of color and form animates the energy of a fashion garment that he chooses to express using the oldest and richest color printing process, dye-transfer prints. He is going to the top of my list of fashion photographers to watch.
The Third Eye Gallery Aya in Osaka Japan was a pleasing aesthetic experience that expanded my knowledge of influential Asian women photographers — the booth only featured works by women. Imai Hisae, Yamazawa Elko, Okanoue Toshiko and Ishiuchi Miyako have contributed to the foundational evolution of photography. These artists each pushed the medium to express their own visual voice and are rightfully being written into the photography canon for their seminal contributions.
Arnika Dawkins Gallery consistently educates and expands my knowledge with her unerring eye to herald artists who weave the provocative with beauty. Arnika brought Keris Salmon to my attention with We Have Made These Lands What They Are, and this year exhibited To Have And To Hold, Salmon’s current iteration of her exploration into the architecture of slavery. The formal and engaging presentation of images with letterpress belie their heartbreaking content.
I was delighted to collaborate with Mona Kuhn to host a gallery talk at her exceptional exhibition of solarized images from her Kings Road series in her current exhibition at the Edwynn Houk Gallery on Fifth Avenue. Kuhn gave a generous walk through of her work in dynamic visual conversation with Surrealists including Erwin Blumenfeld, Man Ray and Dora Maar. Kuhn consistently challenges herself and the bounds of the medium. She embraces limitations as a means to an end in a playful and serious investigation of how to bring her imagination to life. Her muses are the body, space and light. She is a huntress prowling inner and outer landscapes attempting to capture our most elusive element, time.
Olivia Parker’s latest work featured at the Robert Klein is literally explosive. Her incessant curiosity, keen observation and patient inquiries have allowed her to turn sporing mushrooms into modern abstractions that captivate, I love in her series, Ink, how she seizes natures alchemy and adds a dash of her own.
A final surprise was the Honduran artist, Daniel Handel whose deeply conceptual themes of truth, perception and authenticity are cleverly and playfully melded in his series, Engaños. He brilliantly links photographies complicity in obscuring truth with his personal experience of revealing his queerness by deftly working with illusion and expectation. His correlated confections deliver a gut punch.
