Of My Affection, an exhibition exploring the object – but through transmutation of photography, from representational images into personal and process driven practices. A paradox manifest, the exhibition finds its way somewhere between Warhol’s obsession with objects, both inanimate and personal, René Magritte’s ‘this is not a pipe’, and Gordon Matta-Clark’s documented interventions.

The exhibition features artists working to depict an object in a way that may subjugate the image as first point of entry, by virtue of its own physicality, enveloping the image in a further layer of self-reference. For example, Hanna Liden, whose makeshift still-life subjects, often sourced from found objects relatable to her surroundings, are constructed and then repurposed as personal sculptural portraits. Sutherland collages and over-lays his own photographic images from travels and life experiences as a way to depict fragments of American degradation in a way that exposes the hidden beauty of ordinary objects and situations. Amanda Ross-Ho for instance, constructs assemblages using personal imagery and autobiographical artifacts with a meticulous and sometimes oppositional combination of photography, sculpture, painting, that engages the relationships between objects and experiences.

In other cases, the disciple of photography is fully sublimated into a larger process that becomes both means and end. Sara Vanderbeek’s interests in the transformative qualities of a photograph occur through her recognition of photography’s place in memory – as a historic record, a form of communication, and as an object. She submits to this through a process that develops the relationship between an object, an image of the object, and the idea of the image as an object by itself. Viewing photography as an unruly medium based on experimentation and playful process, Matthew Brandt, focused on connecting his subject to his materials, uses everything from bodily fluids, food, and chemical house-hold products to develop his work. Matthew Porter brings together technologies and styles in unlikely combinations, where the formal standards of an object morph and become hybrid appropriations of colorful personal imagery and autobiographical artifacts.

The artworks and their images plunge into the battles of physicalism versus idealism: does an object exist in and of itself in this world, or do they exist as mental constructs, because they are observed? What is the difference between an object and its representation? Is this really a pipe?

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Matthew Brandt (b. 1982, Los Angeles) received his BFA from Cooper Union in 2004 and his MFA from UCLA in 2008.Featured in Art Auction’s “50 Under 50: The Next Most Collectible Artists” in the June 2013 issue, and his first solo exhibition at M B in the fall of 2011 was met with critical attention: selected by Modern Painters as part of “The 100 Best Fall Shows” and reviewed in the December/January 2013 issue. Brandt was included in the “The Top 30 Under 30 in Art and Design” for Forbes by Jeffrey Deitch in 2012 and Art in America included him in their “Top Finds at Paris Photo Los Angeles” earlier this year. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Armand Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Bidwell Projects (Ohio), The Sir Elton John Photography Collection, UBS Art Collection, Statoil Collection, Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio), Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York), North Carolina Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Cincinnati Art Museum (Ohio), Royal Danish Library and Wieland Collection, among others. This fall, the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio will open Brandt’s first institutional solo exhibition entitled Sticky/Dusty/Wet, which will travel to the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in the fall of 2014. Recent institutional group exhibitions include Land Marks at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Reality Check at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Currents at the Contemporary Art Museum (North Carolina) and Staking Claim at the Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego). Matthew Brandt lives and works in Los Angeles.

Hanna Liden was born in 1976 in Stockholm, Sweden, and lives and works in New York. Liden has been exhibited internationally, including presentations at Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, Rome (2013); MDC|Carlson Gallery project space in Paris (2012); Gewerbemuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland (2010); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2009); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2008), and the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York. She graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2002 with a BFA in Photography.

Matthew Porter (b.1975, Pennsylvania) received his BA from Bard College in 1998 and his MFA from Bard-ICP in 2006. Porter was profiled in The New York Times and included in the “After Photoshop” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum Art (New York, 2012), as well as the International Center of Photography Museum’s “Perspectives 2010.” Recent exhibitions include “Greet the Dust” at M B (Los Angeles), “High Difference” at Invisible Exports (New York), and group shows at Frank Elbaz (Paris) and Koenig & Clinton (New York), and the Foam Museum in Amsterdam. Porter’s curatorial projects include “Seven Summits” at Mount Tremper Arts, “The Crystal Chain” at INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, and “Bedtime for Bonzo” at M B, which was an ARTFORUM Critics’ Pick in 2011. He is the co-editor of Blind Spot magazine Issue 45, and his writings and interviews have been featured in Triple Canopy, Blind Spot, ARTFORUM.com and Canteen. Porter teaches part time at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, and his work is included in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Porter lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Peter Sutherland (Born in 1976, Ann Arbor, Michigan. He lives and works in New York) Sutherland works in different mediums, producing thought provoking imagery in a non-indexical manner at the same time following one thematic thought. His work is honest, a reflection of life as a young American, fragments of urban degradation, exposes the happy accidents that make life interesting, capturing the hidden beauty of ordinary objects and everyday situations. He’s released several publications and films, most recently In 2014, he had solo exhibitions at White Cube in Bermondsey. He has been included in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn; Nahmad Contemporary, New York; The Hole, New York; and Half Gallery, New York. He frequently collaborates with his brother, Andrew Sutherland, and with the Brooklyn-based collective, Still House Group.

Amanda Ross-Ho (born 1975, Chicago lives and works in Los Angeles) Solo exhibitions include The Suburban, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2014); Gone Tomorrow, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York; Cradle of Filth, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; THE CHARACTER AND SHAPE OF ILLUMINATED THINGS, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2013); AMANDA ROSS-HO: TEENY TINY WOMAN, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2012); TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE, The Approach, London; UNTITLED NOTHING FACTORY, Visual Arts Center, University of Texas, Austin (2011); A STACK OF BLACK PANTS, Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles (2010). Group exhibitions include Parings: The Collection at 50, The Orange County Museum of Art (2012); George Herms: Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011); Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside and Out, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Free, The New Museum, New York; New Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Nina in Position, Artists Space, New York; Whitney Biennial, New York (2008). Amanda Ross-Ho received an MFA from University of Southern California and her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sara VanDerBeek was born in Baltimore in 1976 and lives in New York City. She received her BFA from Cooper Union School of Art and Science in New York City in 1998. VanDerBeek has had one-person exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2010): The Approach, London (2008); and D’Amelio Terras, New York (2006). Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including The Anxiety of Photography, Aspen Arts Museum, Aspen; Knight’s Move, SculptureCenter, Long Island City; Image Transfer, Pictures in a Remix Culture, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; New Photography 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Amazement Park: Stan, Sara and Johannes VanDerBeek, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs; The Reach of Realism, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; and The Library of Babel / In and Out of Place, Zabludowicz Collection, London.

For more information, please contact info@anonymousgallery.com

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:  

Matthew Brandt , Hanna Liden , Matthew Porter , Amanda Ross-Ho , Sara Vanderbeek .