Month: September 2011
November 10, 2011 — November 13, 2011
Daniel Blau is pleased to present a unique collection of rare vintage NASA photographs. These incredible pictures depict the wonder and awe of space travel.
These photographs have become part of our collective visual memory for the twentieth century; pictures that markedly symbolise the speed and power of post-war technological development at a time when Cold War tension was rife between the US and Russia. And so began the space race; the period of the 1960’s that saw the first man on the Moon. Missile technology, taken from Germany at the close of WWII, set the technological precedence for manned space crafts to orbit the Earth, eventually landing on lunar soil: a period in human history incomparable to any other; photographed, with immense beauty, for the whole world to gaze in astound.
These are not simple snap-shots by an amateur, taken with a Kodak box, but the result of the combined efforts of thousands of workers and scientists at NASA. Indeed, these are the most expensive photographs ever produced. To see these prints in the flesh is an experience as close to bouncing on lunar soil as any of us will ever get. These magnificent landscapes can be compared to Gustav Le Gray’s large prints of Fontainebleau or his seascapes. Today we treasure these vintage prints for their artistic quality and as permanent visual evidence of a time when the future seemed so close…
‘…Our first shock comes as we stop our spinning motion and swing ourselves around so as to bring the Moon into view. We have not been able to see the Moon for nearly a day now, and the change is electrifying. The Moon I have known all my life, that two-dimensional small yellow disk in the sky, has gone away somewhere, to be replaced by the most awesome sphere I have ever seen. To begin with, it is huge, completely filling our window. Second, it is three-dimensional. The belly of it bulges out toward us in such a pronounced fashion that I almost feel I can reach to touch it…’
– Michael Collins, Apollo XI, July 1969 (NASA Sp-350, 1975, p. 207)
Paris Photo, 10 – 13 Nov 2011
Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, 75008 Paris
A newspaper catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
October 11, 2011 – December 12, 2011, 2012
On the occasion of Gerhard Richter’s major retrospective at the Tate Modern this October, Daniel Blau Ltd. will be housing a parallel exhibition entitled “Benjamin Katz: Gerhard Richter – Atlas Exchanged”.The result of a friendship spanning more than four decades between Richter and Katz, this selection of 80 photographs is taken from the photographer’s vintage archive and includes portraits taken from the 1980s onwards at a variety of locations, including Richter in his studio.
Not confined to the canvas, Richter’s dialogue with photography, prints, and other media present an unequivocal insight into the post-war artist finding his subject matter through whichever media is at hand. The importance of Richter’s body of work “Atlas” is now well documented; serving to highlight the artist’s life’s work and processes through a spiraling amalgamation of imagery culled from his archive. In direct relation to this, we present Katz’s consistent documentation of the spirit of Richter living amongst his work: Katz fashions his photographs in such a way as not to intrude, but, rather to be part of an exchange of ideas found deep within Richter’s sprawling oeuvre.
October 21, 2011 – December 23, 2011
During the Kunstwochenende (Munich Art Weekend) Daniel Blau will be showing the works of British artist Rachel Kneebone. In her first solo show in Germany, Kneebone will exhibit a group of finely detailed porcelain sculptures. These objects grapple with themes of sexuality and death, drawing the viewer into a dark yet humorous world. Taking influence from such things as Dante’s Divine Comedy, William Blake’s The Primaeval Giants Sunk in the Soil (1824–1827) and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, these often phallic, grotesque yet enigmatic sculptures are riddled with a shiny, contorted tale of beauty at its point closest to sex and death.
Kneebone was born in 1973 in Oxfordshire and graduated from the renowned Royal College of Art in London in 2004. In 2005 she was nominated for the MaxMara Art Prize for Women, and that same year, Mario Testino invited her to create a wall sculpture for his show, Diana, Princess of Wales, at Kensington Palace. In 2010 she was awarded the audience prize at the 11th Sculpture Triennial in Felbach. Kneebone lives and works in London.
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