Photo London 2016

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PHOTO LONDON 2016

SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERY



G A L L E RY M I S S I O N Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. With spaces in Hong Kong, Singapore and New York City (in Chelsea and on Madison Avenue), the gallery was the first to focus exclusively on the rise of globalization in contemporary art. The gallery represents painters, sculptors and photographers from around the world. They each work in different mediums and use diverse techniques, but share a passion for cross-cultural dialogue. The gallery is renowned for its support of cultural activities—including poetry readings, book launches, music performances, and film screenings—that further its mission of East-West exchange.


E D WA R D B U R T Y N S K Y Photographer Edward Burtynsky chronicles human impact on nature in his disarmingly beautiful images of industrial landscapes around the world. Burtynsky’s painterly, often abstract photographs, frequently shot from an aerial perspective, show the massive scale of environmental devastation. Burtynsky began photographing nature in the early 1980s. His early works were intimate explorations of Canada’s unspoiled landscapes. By the late 1980s, however, he turned away from the quickly disappearing natural terrain, realizing that this was the world we were losing not the one we were to inherit. Instead, he began to investigate industrial incursions into land with arresting results. His most recent series, Water, begun in 2007, is his largest and most ambitious project to date. It documents the scale and impact of manufacturing and human consumption on the world’s water supplies. In 2015, Colorado River Delta #2, one of the works from this series, was included in Frontiers Reimagined, a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale. Edward Burtynsky was recognized with a TED Prize in 2005. In 2006 he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors. He holds six honorary doctorate degrees and his distinctions include the National Magazine Award, the MOCCA Award, the Outreach Award at the Rencontres d’Arles and the Applied Arts Magazine Complete Book Photography Award. In 2006, Edward Burtynsky was the subject of the award-winning documentary Manufactured Landscapes, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. His newest film, Watermark, debuted in 2013. Edward Burtynsky’s works are in the collections of more than fifty museums worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the AlbrightKnox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; The Photographer’s Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, 1955 | Lives and works in Toronto

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Dryland Farming #12, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain, 2010, chromogenic color print, 48 x 64 inches/122 x 162.5 cm 5


Pivot Irragation #18, High Plains, Texas Panhandle, USA, 2012, chromogenic color print, 68 x 33.25 inches/172.75 x 84.5 cm 6


Rice Terrace #5, Western Yunnan Province, China, 2012, chromogenic color print, 48 x 64 inches/122 x 162.5 cm 7


K A M O L PA N C H O T V I C H A I Kamolpan Chotvichai addresses issues of identity and gender in her photo-based self-portraits. At the same time, she challenges the formal limitations of paper and canvas by meticulously handcutting her images, creating sinuous ribbons along various parts of her anatomy. Her goal is to dissolve her form, based on an understanding of the Buddhist teachings of the three characteristics of existence: anatta (the eternal substance that exists beyond the physical self); dukkha (sorrow and dissatisfaction); and anicca (impermanence). She obliterates her identity, eliminating her face and literally stripping away her physical form, in the process relinquishing attachment to her body. The artist received a Master of Fine Arts degree at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, and has since been awarded numerous scholarships and art prizes. Kamolpan Chotvichai was invited to participate in ON PAPER, a paper art workshop that was part of the ON PAPER—Paper & Nature exhibition at Tama Art University Museum, Tokyo. Group shows include Anthropos: Navigating Human Depth in Thai and Singapore Contemporary Art, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Singapore and New York, 2013; the 4th Young Artists Talent Art Exhibition 2013, Royal Thai Consulate-General, Los Angeles; the 2012 International Women Arts Exhibition, Lights of Women, Gwangju Museum of Art Kum Namro Wing, Metro Gallery, Korea, 2012; and Frontiers Reimagined, a Collateral Event of the Venice Biennale, 2015. Chotvichai was a featured artist in Thailand Eye at the Saatchi Gallery, London, which closed in January 2016. She currently has a solo exhibition on view at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Born in Bangkok, 1986 | Lives and works in Bangkok

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Collapse, 2013, c-type print and hand-cut paper, 29.9 x 54.3 inches/76 x 138 cm, edition 1 of 3 9


Right Hand, 2013, c-type print and hand-cut paper, 33 x 29.5 inches/ 84 x 75 cm, edition 1 of 3

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KENRO IZU One of the greatest living platinum printers working today, Japanese photographer Kenro Izu uses a custom-built, three-hundred-pound Deardorff camera to produce deeply compelling images of revered religious monuments in Syria, Jordan, England, Chile and most recently, Buddhist and Hindu monuments in Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, Vietnam and India. Izu began working as a commercial photographer in New York City shortly after emigrating from Japan in 1970. After visiting some of the sacred sites of Egypt, Izu was struck by the dichotomy between the massive stone structures and a sense of impermanence. Izu began to shift his focus to fine-art photography, travelling to some of the most remote areas of the world to capture sacred sites and worshippers. Kenro Izu’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions around the world, including at the Rubin Museum of Art, New York; the Fitchburg Museum of Art, Massachusetts; the Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts; and the Detroit Institute of Art. Izu is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Lucca Photo Award from the Lucca Photo Fest, Italy; the Vision Award from The Center for Photography, Woodstock; a National Endowment for Arts Grant; and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is in the collections of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; and Galleria Civica Modena. Born in Osaka, Japan, 1949 | Lives and works in Rhinebeck, New York

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Do Chu La #129, Bhutan, 2003, archival pigment print, 44 x 60 inches/111.75 x 152.4 cm, edition 2 of 3 13


Agra #43, India, 2008, archival pigment print, 44 x 60 inches/111.75 x 152.4 cm, edition AP 1

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H I R O J I K U B O TA Rooted in his experience of Japan, ravaged by destruction and famine at the end of World War II, Hiroji Kubota’s work is characterized by a desire to find beauty and honor in human experience. He was born in Tokyo in 1939 and began his career assisting Magnum photographers René Burri, Burt Glinn and Elliott Erwitt on their visit to Japan in 1961. Becoming a Magnum photographer himself, he produced major bodies of work on the United States, Japan, China, North and South Korea and Southeast Asia. Hiroji Kubota was introduced to the dye-transfer printing process at the urging of a friend in the late 1980s. This costly and complicated process used to create high-quality multi-color materials for print advertising was mostly phased out by the 1960s, except for a few printers who continued to use it for photographic art. One of those printers, Nino Mondhe—who printed for Irving Penn and Harry Callahan—was known for using twelve colors instead of the traditional three. Kubota, dazzled by the spectrum of vibrant color Mondhe achieved, produced fifty-five prints and two triptychs with the master printer over a twenty-year period, until the materials ran out and Mondhe eventually closed his studio. The work on display here at Photo London offers a rare opportunity to see Kubota’s color images produced with this rarely used technique that is impossible to duplicate today. Hiroji Kubota’s numerous publications include China (1985), From Sea to Shining Sea: A Portrait of America (1992), Out of the East: Transition and Tradition in Asia (1997) and Japan (2004). His work has been exhibited around the world, including at the International Center of Photography, New York; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo. A retrospective of his work was held at Aperture Foundation, New York, in 2015. Born in Tokyo, 1939 | Lives and works in Japan

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Kyaiktiyo, Burma, 1978, dye-transfer print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 17


Li River, Guilin, China, 1979, dye-transfer print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 18


Anshan Steel Mill, at the time the largest steel mill in the country, Liaoning, China, 1981, dye-transfer print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 19


Qingming Festival, Hangzhou, China, 1983, dye-transfer print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 20


Kashihara Shrine, Nara, Japan, 2002, dye-transfer print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 21


Tsurui, “crane village,� Hokkaido, Japan, 2002, dye-transfer print, 24 x 20 inches/61 x 50.8 cm

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S H I R I N N E S H AT Born in Tehran and educated in the West, Shirin Neshat uses photography and video to explore themes of identity, gender and politics. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, Neshat moved to New York in the mid-1980s to join the Storefront for Art and Architecture, a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary exhibition space for emerging artists. It wasn’t until 1993, after returning home to Iran for the first time since the Islamic Revolution, that Neshat began to exhibit her photography, including one of her most notable series Women of Allah (1993–1997), in which she examines the complex philosophical and ideological issues facing Islamic women living on the fringe of the Middle Eastern cultural landscape. By the late 1990s, Neshat started to move away from photography in favor of video, creating installations that employed a subtler tone—a departure from the more politely charged imagery she was becoming known for. While alluding to the oppressed existence Islamic law imposes on women, Neshat’s intentionally ambiguous narratives are left open to interpretation. Collaboration is an integral part of Neshat’s practice; she’s worked on several projects with singer Sussan Deyhim, cinematographer Ghassem Ebrahimian and composer Philip Glass. In 2014, Neshat returned to the medium of photography with Our House Is On Fire, a collaborative exhibition with American artist Larry Barns presented by the Rauschenberg Foundation. The show was originally intended to explore the repercussions of the Egyptian revolution, but when Burns’ young daughter passed away unexpectedly, the two photographers decided to redirect the focus to explore the more universally relatable experiences of death and mourning. Shirin Neshat has exhibited extensively in major cultural institutions across the globe, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Dallas Museum of Art; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens. She has participated in numerous biennales and film festivals, including the Venice Biennale in both 1995 and 1999, where she won the First International Prize; the Whitney Biennial in 2000; and Moving Pictures at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in 2002. Born in Qazvin, Iran, 1957 | Lives and works in New York

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Possessed Series, 2001, Cibachrome print, 47.5 x 60 inches/120.65 x 152.4 cm 25


ROBERT POLIDORI Robert Polidori’s atmospheric photographs of buildings—exteriors and interiors—altered by the passage of time and the people who have lived in them are investigations into the psychological implications of the human habitat. He has shot all over the world: decaying mansions in the formerly splendid metropolis of Havana, the colonial architecture of Goa and urban dwellings in China and Dubai among other countries. Polidori’s career as a fine-art photographer began in the early 1980s when he gained permission to document the restoration of the Palace of Versailles. Since then, he has returned to the palace several times to take more pictures, and in each one, his conception of rooms as metaphors and vessels of memory is evident. His tonally rich and seductive photographs are the product of long hours waiting for the right light, careful contemplation of the camera angle and a keen sociological understanding of place. Polidori uses large-format sheet film, which he believes produces superior images to digital photography. Robert Polidori won the World Press Photo of the Year Award in 1998 and the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography in 1999 and 2000. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York commissioned him to photograph New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and exhibited those photographs in 2006. In 2015 his triptych Favela Rocinha #1, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which highlights the fact that most of the world’s growing urban population lives in selfconstructed cities, often on squatted land, was shown in Frontiers Reimagined, a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale. He has published eleven books and his work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Born in Montreal, 1951 | Lives and works in New York

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Galerie Basse, (51) CCE.01.041, Corps Central - R.d.c., Ch창teau de Versailles, France, 1986, archival pigment inkjet print, 50 x 40 inches/127 x 101.6 cm 27


Salle de Crimee Sud, (98) ANR.02.035, Salles de l’Afrique, Aile du Nord - 1er etage, Chateau de Versailles, France, 2007, archival pigment inkjet print, 50 x 60 inches/127 x 152.4 cm

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S U N D A R A M TA G O R E G A L L E R I E S new york new york hong kong singapore

547 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001 • tel 212 677 4520 • gallery@sundaramtagore.com 1100 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10028 • tel 212 288 2889 4/F, 57-59 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong • tel 852 2581 9678 • hongkong@sundaramtagore.com 5 Lock Road 01-05, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108933 • tel 65 6694 3378 • singapore@sundaramtagore.com

President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Hong Kong: Faina Derman Director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor Registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso Designer: Russell Whitehead Contributing editors: Kieran Doherty and Payal Uttam

WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM Text © 2016 Sundaram Tagore Gallery Photographs © Sundaram Tagore Gallery All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.




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