Wilamina,
2004, pigmented ink on canvas, 80 x 44"

 

GARY SCHNEIDER: Nudes
February 10 - March 14
Opening Reception Friday: February 10th 5-7pm

For Imediate Release

Howard Yezerski Gallery is pleased to present our fifth exhibition Nudes by acclaimed photographer Gary Schneider. The exhibition will feature 8 of his full length, 44 x 80" nude portraits. The response to this brave and engaging work has been remarkable. Since 2001, when Schneider began making these Nudes, the series has attracted a great deal of critical praise with a feature article in Art In America written by Trevor Fairbrother as well as an interview with Lynn Tillman in Aperture magazine. In 2005 the Aperture Foundation published a monograph of the series and exhibited 26 of the portraits in their gallery in New York.

In this series Schneider continues to embark on his exploration of durational photographs and in the process manages to redefine the nude and challenge ideas of traditional portraiture. The structured performance has always played a part in Schneider’s work. It is important to him to engage in an activity where his experience of the process is separate from the subject's personal experience of the act, which is in turn separate from the audience’s experience of the work. The subjects lie on mats with the large format camera positioned above them. Counting light he explores their bodies with a small flashlight, exposing one part after another in one continuous exposure. Building the image in this way each portrait can take from one to three hours. By fragmenting the exposure Schneider breaks down the subject’s ability to make a projected mask as well as his own desire to control that mask. In each of the nude portraits the figures emerge out of the dark black background and float on the wall, as described in the New Yorker as if they were "earthy gods and goddesses". The tones are lush and luminous as Schneider exaggerates the colors that naturally appear in each subjects skin. Some of the bodies exude colors of warmth while others an innate coolness. Creating a wonderful group of nudes that as Grace Glueck from the New York Times says when they are "seen together, these poignant portraits rise above their individual characteristics to present a collective celebration of the human body, it's life force triumphant over it very evident mortality".

Schneider was born in 1954 in East London, South Africa and now lives in New York. His Portraits were the subject of a survey at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University with a fully illustrated catalog published by Yale University Press and HUAM curated by Deborah Martin Kao in February of 2004. It incorporated his acclaimed Genetic Self-Portrait. He has shown extensively worldwide including the Museé d'Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland; the Museum of Fine Art in Boston; the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Mass MoCA in North Adams Massachusetts; The International Center of Photography in New York; and The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada..
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