EXHIBITION

Still Life: Capturing the Moment

Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert, California, Palm Desert, 08/07/2015 - 02/21/2016

72-567 Highway 111

ABOUT

In a creative mix of art works from the museum’s holdings and on loan from private collections, the exhibition looks beyond the classical definition of a “still life” to explore why this esteemed genre continues to compel artists today. Throughout time, visual artists have delighted in the excitement of transforming commonplace objects into symbolic encounters with the world and self. Bringing together paintings, sculptures, photographs, and a surprising variety of other media, this exhibition studies the powerful psychological and associational value of altering time, place, and imagery into an artistic still life.

In the early twentieth-century, photographers such as Cy DeCosse, Baron Adolf De Meyer, and Paul Strand focused on capturing the sensual elements of light, texture, and form in everyday life. Today, contemporary photographers including Tom Baril, Michael Childers, and John Dugdale reveal the passion to document, describe, and celebrate material pleasures and possessions.

Many still lifes require meticulous renderings and pure technical virtuosity. In seductive paintings by Bruce Cohen, Helen Lundeberg, and Paul Wonner, these masterful skills are employed to transform the commonplace into visual illusions of imaginative and complex beauty. New media installations by artists such as Jennifer Steinkamp and Catherine Chalmers expand beyond the genre’s conventions to produce alluring contemporary innovations, while artist Ori Gersht creates a mesmerizing film that literally explodes the idea of still life. Taken together, this exhibition offers a refreshing, pleasurable, and often surprising look at the art of still life.

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APT ARTISTS ON VIEW

Evan Holloway

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