The past few months have proven to be a productive time for many of our represented artists! We are thrilled to show you new photographs from several CEG artists, many of whom will debut recently completed work at The Photography Show presented by AIPAD April 4 – 8, as well as Photo London, May 17 – 20. Read on to learn about the new pieces you can expect to see from Clarissa Bonet, Ysabel LeMay, and Laurent Millet!
Clarissa Bonet
Clarissa Bonet (b. 1986 Tampa) lives and works in Chicago. Her work explores aspects of the urban space in both a physical and psychological context. She received her M.F.A. in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2012, and her B.S. in Photography from the University of Central Florida. Interested in the physical space of the city and its emotional and psychological impact on the body, she uses the camera to transform the physical space into a psychological one, providing a personal interpretation of the urban landscape. Her work has been exhibited nationally, internationally, and resides in the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Photography’s MPP collection, The South East Museum of Photography, and The Haggerty Museum. Most recently she received a second Chicago Individual Artist Grant and was curated into a group show at the Bauhaus Archive Museum in Berlin, Germany.
Stray Light
Building facades melt into darkness, their architectural details vanish, leaving only glowing windows in a sea of pitch black, like stars in the night sky. Stray Light is an ongoing photographic project aimed at imaging the nocturnal urban landscape. We have all but lost the night for our progress. In its place we have formed a new cosmos, one of vanished surfaces and flecks of light. Carefully constructing each image from multiple photographs, I reform the urban landscape in my own vision – one that seeks to reconstruct the heavens in its absence above the cityscape. Light emanating from each window references a world unknown, evoking a sense of mystery and awe. We no longer look up to the night’s sky with awe. Instead, that is how we look out at the city.
One 42 x 42″ pigment print of “SL.2018.0222 Chicago, 2018” will be on view at The Photography Show. Two 24 x 24″ images from Stray Light, including “SL.2018.0222 Chicago, 2018” will be on view at Photo London.
City Space
The urban space is striking – its tall and mysterious buildings, crowds of anonymous people, the endless sea of concrete. City Space is an ongoing photographic exploration of the urban environment and my perception of it. I am interested in the physical space of the city and its emotional and psychological impact on the body. These photographs reconstruct mundane events in the city that I have personally experienced or witnessed in public. Stark light, deep shadow and muted color are visual strategies I explore to describe the city. I use the city as a stage and transform the physical space into a psychological one. The images I create do not represent a commonality of experience but instead provide a personal interpretation of the urban landscape.
Ysabel LeMay
Ever since the invention of the camera, there are few subjects that attract photographers more than the landscape. Whether photographing from the sky or lying on the grass, photographers continually seek to understand and explore the ground upon which we live and walk. While it seems almost impossible to capture nature in a unique way, Ysabel LeMay defies all odds, creating spectacular images that radiate with color, density and awe.
Ysabel LeMay (b. 1966 Quebec) found photography later in life, after a successful career working as a graphic artist for prominent advertising agencies. Seeking greater fulfillment, she turned to painting, and in 2002, left the corporate world to pursue painting fulltime. Eight years later, she turned her attention to photography, garnering significant success in a few short years. Combining her technical expertise with her painterly eye, LeMay creates photographs that challenge our perception of the landscape.
Lemay’s technique is very straightforward, yet extremely time consuming. She photographs flora, birds, tree limbs, flowers, and anything else she finds along her daily walks. Once back in the studio, she assembles all her files into her computer and starts layering images, using hundreds of individual files to construct each final photograph. Balancing color, light and subject, Ysabel LeMay creates pieces that vibrate with an intensity often experienced in dreams. You will find both “Incubatio, 2018” and “Hydra 2017” at The Photography Show. “Voltige, 2018” and “Hydra, 2017” will be on view at Photo London.
Laurent Millet
For more than twenty years, Laurent Millet has channeled his innate curiosity to create photographs that question the way objects appear within space and time. Citing R. Buckminster Fuller and Denis Diderot among his influences, Millet creates an artistic vocabulary through metal wire, vineyard posts and barrel hoops – objects prevalent in the coastal town of France in which he resides. L’Astrophile, one of the artist’s latest bodies of work, invokes the imagery of a lunar landing. Two salt prints from this series will be on view at The Photography Show.
There is a rich history of artists constructing environments simply to be photographed and then disassembled. These created realities were prevalent in the 1980s, as works by Sandy Skoglund, Bernard Faucon, Bruce Charlesworth, James Welling and other artists burst onto the scene. All of these artists worked with objects to create a narrative, captured by the camera. Laurent Millet (b. 1968 France) continues to work in this tradition, using various 19th c. printing techniques to magnify his vision.
As he stated in a 2014 interview in L’Oeil de la Photographie: “I felt like I had to take refuge in something that was comforting and reassuring… This idea brought me back to what I did as a child in the countryside when I would play with wood and stones. I rediscovered that pleasure as an adult… Starting with the first things I built, fishing machines, I felt like a world was opening up in which I could really exist. These objects are powered by my personal fictions, my dream of another life. The photograph is proof of that, a record of the moment, a reward.”
Laurent Millet’s work can be seen in numerous publications including his 2014 book, Les Enfantillages Pittoresques (Filigranes Editions) and in major museum collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago, Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Fonds National d’art Contemporain (Paris), among others.
See all the work headed to The Photography Show and Photo London by visiting the Art Fair page of our website here.
Catherine Edelman Gallery 