Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Sylmar, California, 2008
Philip-Lorca diCorcia is the latest artist to make the move over to David Zwirner Gallery and is finally having his debut exhibition as we speak.
On view is the entire series of polaroids from diCorcia’s Thousand book released last year.
Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Thousand, installed at David Zwirner
DiCorcia has obviously been digging through the archives and cleaning out the closet these past few years, making new bodies of work by creating a context around older images (A Storybook Life) and polaroids (Thousand). He has come up with some pretty strong bodies of work.
I already wrote about my thoughts concerning Thousand when I saw an installation of the work in LA. The main difference here is that the images are presented in the exact order that you find them in the book. Considering that the book’s order was randomly conceived in the first place, I find it strange that they bothered to follow that order in the exhibition.
Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Thousand, installed at David Zwirner
Arranged in the gallery in one very long line and hung at eye level, the polaroids are wonderful yet exhausting to look at. I love seeing the images behind the images. This is almost like seeing a giant Ellsworth Kelly drawing show of sketches for ideas for paintings (actually on view right now at Matthew Marks).
The exhibition has been designed so as to allow the viewer to walk in one direction and keep walking until all the polaroids have been seen. You wind up right back where you started, it’s giant jagged rectilinear loop.
One thing I don’t like about the way the polaroids have been installed here is that each has been mounted to an individual piece of aluminum. I realize why they did that but the fragility of the polaroid medium is a bit lost due to the hardness of the metal backing. What I liked in LA was how the polaroids were literally stuck to the wall and one could see the bends and curls in each piece.
Looking at all the images became a sort of game for me, trying to remember the actual finished pieces or trying to find images of the artist himself as he grows older. Surprisingly I even recognized a couple of friends who show up in more than one image, apparently they were assisting diCorcia on a few of his street shoots.
The real surprise and I guess the treat of the exhibition at Zwirner is a small room filled with four completely new large scale works, a trailer of sorts for what will probably become his next show.
Supposedly titled Eden, the images come from a new body of work still in progress. On a side note, I wonder who else but diCorcia would have the audacity to bluntly call a new body of work Eden. Of course there is Robert Adam’s Eden but can anyone imagine a young unknown photographer doing something like that? It’s almost like calling a new project Hell or The World.
Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Andrea, 2008
The new photographs bare a close resemblance to the extraneous work that went into A Storybook Life but blown up to a much larger epic scale. These are obviously Inkjet prints (come on, all the kids are doing it) but done pretty well. I do miss the smaller scale of the Storybook work but
the cinematic quality of life is still there as are the implied open ended narratives as well as the magical almost divine light.
Even more romantic than Matthew Porter’s images of cowboys, diCorcia’s cowboy image shown at the top of the post is probably my favorite of the new works.
It’s hard to come to any real conclusions about the work based on just four new photographs but it’s nice to see that diCorcia has been shooting and is continuing to do so.
Take a look at the other new images on the gallery website.
Thanks for this, diCorcia is one of my favourites, it’s nice to see new work.
At least you can walk up close to the polaroids here instead of leaning way over that rope at LACMA. Evidently, even with the rope, some were stolen. Maybe the galleristas will actually have to get up from behind that desk to keep vigilant.
I agree with your point about the aluminum backing, although it was probably used as a theft deterrent. I love seeing poloroids, especially now that the medium is basically being washed out of exsitance. Part of the reason why poloroids speak to me and what drew me to this posting is how tangible the moment in time feels. This instant documentation of a moment is symbolized in the instant gratification of the image.