Construct. Photographs by Lynne Cohen, Karen Knorr and Mayumi Terada
27 November – 22 December 2009
Curated by James Hyman, the exhibition provides an exploration of constructed interior space. Lynne Cohen carefully frames found interiors in public buildings such as offices, spas, police schools, laboratories and military training facilities. These strange spaces often retain a modicum of domesticity and through Cohen's lens can appear both performative and uncanny. One of Karen Knorr's recent series explores the famously austere minimalism of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye. Unexpectedly, these spaces are occupied not by the foreseen human subjects but by birds, roaming unfettered and free in playful transgression of the boundaries between nature and culture. Mayumi Terada evokes moods that hover in the liminal place between dream and wakefulness. Seemingly commonplace chairs, windows, halls and bedrooms lie still and empty yet wear traces of implied narrative and symbolism. These constructs are the result of the artist's creation of miniature interiors which are then staged, lit and photographed.
