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Indepth Arts News:
"Thomas Brummett: Recent Work"
2003-03-23 until 2003-05-17
Galerie Karsten Greve
Paris, ,
USA United States of America
The Gallerie Karsten Greve Paris announces the opening of the first European
solo show by the American photographer Thomas Brummett. In an extensive
overview of the artist's recent work, three new series will be on display.
In all his works the artist depicts various stages of organic life forms and plants using different highly specialized printing techniques in order to create images in which he transcends the "realistic" observation of nature into dreamlike images of high aesthetic quality.
The so called "Desert Series" has been realised in a journey by the artist
to a desert in Arizona. While photographing in the natural landscape,
Brummett puts single objects like cactuses, flowers and tress, into view. Hethus creates a surreal atmosphere - never revealing the landscape as a
whole - in order to initialise the viewer's own imagination. As he puts it:
"I have moved from a dialog of reproduction, observation and scale to a
conversation about nature, technology and memory; the act of acute
observation as it pertains to science and religion, the historical notion of
an 'object of wonder' along with the development of a personal natural
history 'collection' or 'cabinet'. What I am now attempting is to try to
mine the areas where these concerns and ideas overlap. () I collect these
natural objects and photograph them in such a way as to turn them into a
type of cultural memory. By finishing them as Iris prints I hope to add a
final layer of meaning" (Brummett)
In the series titled "Re-Thinking the Natural "
which relates also to the above stated ideals, Brummett
concentrates on single flowers and fruits using a restrained palette of
brown and earth like tones. The stippled surface of the Iris prints used
here adds to the otherworldliness in which the simple subject is imbued.
Taking the objects out of their natural context, the artist creates images
of high beauty with a floating, dreamlike atmosphere, a "memory space" which
rises questions about the passing of time and the vanity of life.
For the most recent series, entitled the "Diatom Series", the artist
photographed Diatom specimens mounted onto slides (from the collection of
the English collector Klaus Kemp) on a microscope in his studio. The color
pigment printing process he uses for these works derives from an old
photographic technique started in the 19th century by the Louis Dacon du
Hauron. Like his previous work Brummett opens up a world where once again it
is familiar yet a type of transcendent fragmented memory. This work exists
in what could be deep space or the microscopic, Victorian or Modern.
Thomas Brummett, born in the United States in 1955 and working as a
photographer since 1983, has widely shown in galleries and museums all over
the United States. His work has been collected in numerous American private
and public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Thomas Brummett lives and works in Philadelphia.
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