Falling 1 ,
2005, lightjet print on Fuji Crystal Archive paper mounted on aluminum, 48 x 48"

 

NEETA MADAHAR : NATURE STUDIES
April 21 - May 23
Opening Reception Friday: April 21st 5-7pm

For Imediate Release

Howard Yezerski Gallery is pleased to present Nature Studies the second exhibition of work by photographer Neeta Madahar at the gallery. Nature Studies will feature work from two of Madahars' latest bodies of work, Falling and Cosmoses. Falling was jointly commissioned by Fabrica, Photoworks, and inVIA (Institute of International Visual Arts) in London.

Falling features five large-scale color digital c-prints and a video. Set against the backdrop of the endlessly open sky both capture the countless sycamore seeds as they fall at a dreamlike pace, seemingly without origin or destination. In reconstructing this innocent childhood memory that most of us have experienced Madahar explores how the temporal experience of a moment of reverie is compressed or expanded through recollection. The title Falling refers to the literal falling of the seeds but Madahar also uses it to allude to the loss of control. Using the crescendo of seeds building up and moving haphazardly through the sky, this dream like fantasy state can be pleasurable in the moment, but as Madahar suggests it can simultaneously induce anxiety about the eventual finality of the experience. Madahar teamed up with an astronomer to create the night sky in the Falling images, this sublime experience of stargazing with the guidance of an expert left a lasting impression on her and inspired her Cosmoses series.

The Cosmos flower was given its name because of its perfect symmetry of petals. Cosmos also refers to the universe, a seemingly random mass of stars and planets, pulled together into a structured system. In her Cosmoses series Madahar is creating large-scale photograms using origami Cosmos flowers. Using a systematic process to create the flowers, Madahar in the dark randomly places the origami flowers on the light sensitive paper. The result is a series of unique photograms that continue the tension between the random and the ordered, the naturally occurring and the tightly constructed which occurs in all of Madahars' work.

In conjunction there will be an exhibition of Nature Studies at the Danforth Museum of Art April 21 - June 4. A monograph available of Nature Studies produced by Photoworks with essays by Carlo McCormick and David Chandler will be available at the gallery.

For further information please contact Alexis Dunfee at Howard Yezerski Gallery 617.262.0550 Tuesday - Saturday 10-5:30pm