Melanie Schiff: The stars are not wanted now
Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, North Dakota, Raleigh, 05/17/2013 - 09/01/2013
ABOUT
The stars are not wanted now is the largest and most comprehensive presentation of Melanie Schiff’s photographs to date. Spanning the years 2005 through 2012, and bracketing the period of Schiff’s move from Chicago to Los Angeles in 2008, the exhibition illuminates ongoing concerns in the artist’s investigations of light, atmosphere, place and landscape. “The stars are not wanted now” is taken from a line in W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” an oft-recited elegiac poem decreeing the suspension of time, light and communication. The phrase alludes to the imprints of time and memory apparent in Schiff’s solitary meditations. A close reading of the title also suggests Schiff’s poetic engagement with penetrating natural light, the role of natural phenomena in her subject matter, and her transition from incorporating the histories of icons in popular music, or “stars.”
Schiff achieves dramatic, sometimes haunting, effects with everyday objects, simple gestures, or found landscapes and interiors. Feeling less bound to objects as representations of self, the artist has stepped away from her earlier references to pop and youth culture. Schiff’s recent work is rooted in the tradition of photographers in the American West, such as Robert Adams, who ventured out into the landscape to look. Her prolonged engagement with specific locations and her precise sensitivity to the particularities of light yield quiet, almost mystical, revelations brimming with the residue of other lives.
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The stars are not wanted now is the largest and most comprehensive presentation of Melanie Schiff’s photographs to date. Spanning the years 2005 through 2012, and bracketing the period of Schiff’s move from Chicago to Los Angeles in 2008, the exhibition illuminates ongoing concerns in the artist’s investigations of light, atmosphere, place and landscape. “The stars are not wanted now” is taken from a line in W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” an oft-recited elegiac poem decreeing the suspension of time, light and communication. The phrase alludes to the imprints of time and memory apparent in Schiff’s solitary meditations. A close reading of the title also suggests Schiff’s poetic engagement with penetrating natural light, the role of natural phenomena in her subject matter, and her transition from incorporating the histories of icons in popular music, or “stars.”
Schiff achieves dramatic, sometimes haunting, effects with everyday objects, simple gestures, or found landscapes and interiors. Feeling less bound to objects as representations of self, the artist has stepped away from her earlier references to pop and youth culture. Schiff’s recent work is rooted in the tradition of photographers in the American West, such as Robert Adams, who ventured out into the landscape to look. Her prolonged engagement with specific locations and her precise sensitivity to the particularities of light yield quiet, almost mystical, revelations brimming with the residue of other lives.
For More Information