Yancey Richardson, New York
03.04.2014 - 10.05.2014
Yancey Richardson is pleased to present Historyʼs Shadow, the first exhibition at the gallery by American artist David Maisel. For over twenty-five years, Maiselʼs photographic work has been wide-ranging in scope, and yet deeply focused on what he describes as a “long-term investigation into the aesthetics of entropy, and the dual processes of memory and excavation.”
© David Maisel, History’s Shadow GM25, Archival Pigment Print, 2010
Maiselʼs previous work includes several aerial landscape portfolios exposing the surreal, almost incandescent imprint of industrial mining and mineral extraction operations throughout the American West. In a later project, Library of Dust, Maiselʼs inquiries shifted dramatically in scale, to the unique imprint of mineral corrosion on individual copper canisters from a hospital archive.
Historyʼs Shadow represents an elegant continuation of these well-established themes, utilizing x-rays as source material to explore the intersection of scientific research and visual art. The exhibitionʼs title comes from a project of the same name, inspired by the artistʼs residency at the Getty Research Institute, during which time he re-photographed x-rays of sculptural antiquities culled from the useumʼs conservation archives. According to Maisel, Historyʼs Shadow refers “both to the literal images that the x-rays create as they are re-photographed, and to the metaphorical content informed by the past from which these objects derive.”
© David Maisel, History’s Shadow GM12, Archival Pigment Print, 2010
In his essay, Trace Elements and Core Samples, Maisel describes the transformative nature of the material: “The ghostly images of these x-rays seemed to surpass the potency of the original objects of art. These spectral renderings were like transmissions from the distant past, conveying messages across time, and connecting the contemporary viewer to the art impulse at the core of these ancient works. Through the x-ray process, the artworks of origin become de-familiarized and de-contextualized, yet acutely alive and renewed, revivified. The shadow-worlds they occupy are informed by the black space surrounding the images, which in some instances becomes a vast nether world, and in others becomes the velvety ground of some kind of brain scan/portrait.”
In addition to Historyʼs Shadow, selections from Maiselʼs Library of Dust series will be on display in the galleryʼs project space. In Library of Dust, the artist photographed individual copper canisters containing
the cremated remains of patients from a state-run psychiatric hospital, documenting the beautiful yet disquieting effect of mineral corrosion on each unique object. As in Historyʼs Shadow, these
transformative still-life objects float in a void against a pure black background, sublime meditations on the passage of time, memory, loss, and the metaphorical illustration of matter versus spirit.
© David Maisel, History’s Shadow GM16, Archival Pigment Print, 2010
David Maisel was born in New York City in 1961. He received his BA from Princeton University, and his MFA from California College of the Arts. His photographs, multi-media projects, and public installations
have been exhibited internationally, and are included in many public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Victoria & Albert Museum; the National Gallery of Art; the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Yale University Art Gallery; the Nevada Museum of Art; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
among others. Maiselʼs work has been the subject of five onographs: Black Maps (2013), Historyʼs Shadow (2011), Library of Dust (2008), Oblivion (2006), and The Lake Project (2004).
© Yancey Richardson | David Maisel