contemporary art

http://deyoung.famsf.org
Golden Gate Park | 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive • San Francisco, CA
May 1, 2010 – October 3, 2010

David Hockney
Luncheon at the British Embassy, Tokyo, Feb. 16, 1983 1983.
Photocollage. 1996.74.183

Photo/Synthesis highlights the dynamic trend in the field of contemporary photography, collages, assemblages, and other multi-part or composite photo-based projects. Dating from the 1960s to the present, the works in this exhibition transcend the limitations of traditional photography in which the camera simply captures a unique view or a decisive moment in time. Breaking free of the conventional frame, they are instead the products of various methods of assembling and organizing multiple photographic images into larger artistic statements. In each case, the sum communicates much more than the component parts.

The Lost and Found Project:
Dance of Life: YOU, 1979
Skrits I’ve known, Jane #27, 1978

Artists like David Hockney, Olafur Eliasson, Ed Ruscha, and Nigel Poor have used photo-collage, photo-assemblage, and related practices to explore elements of scale, space, time, and narrative. Photo/Synthesis features a selection of photographs by these artists and others from the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Charles and Diane Frankel.

Gerhard Richter
Strontium, 2005

German artist Gerhard Richter has created Strontium, a large-scale mural for the new de Young derived from digitally-manipulated photographs, that together form a geometric black and white motif representing the atomic structure of strontium titanate, a synthetic substance often used to create artificial diamonds. The monumental piece is constructed of 130 digital prints, each one measuring 27-1/2-x 37-1/4 inches, mounted on aluminum with plexiglass coating. It spans a total of 31 x 29.86 feet and is installed in Wilsey Court, the de Young’s central public gathering space.

Nigel Poor
The Relative Value of Things
A document of discarded items. For several years he have kept a list of everything he got rid of, this does not include garbage – only functional items he thought he needed.

At Photo/Synthesis Poor showcased his project July 1988, a conceptual self portrait made of single found object photographs.