RALPH GIBSON

RALPH GIBSON

Award-winning Photographer
Leica Hall of Fame Inductee · Recipient of the French Legion of Honor

I wouldn't be able to effectively delineate where my life ends and photography begins. They're one and the same. If my eyes are open, I'm seeing. If I'm seeing, I'm essentially in that valence within which, or from within which come the images. In that book, Self Exposure, one of the things I did realize as I was writing it: all autobiographies are chronological and anecdotal. That's the way they unfold. And I realized that there were certain decisions I had made along the way that were crucial. And there was really only a handful of them. But I was very fortunate because I had that initial desire to be a photographer. I don't even know if it was a desire. I think it was something much further beyond that. I would have to say it was more of a...I didn't really choose photography, it sort of chose me, you know. I mean, nolo contendere. I just did what I knew I had to do. There was a sense of devoir, you know, you just do it. Claude Lévi-Strauss the great social anthropologist has made this sort of thing clear: Society changes and with it the context through which we observe something has changed as well. And so I like the role of art in society and my relationship to my society and to art in my society. Now I'm interested in this phase of my life and how does the mind influence the mind? 

VILHELM HAMMERSHØI · SILENCE

VILHELM HAMMERSHØI · SILENCE

Can silence be painted? How can artists capture interior states, solitude, and the passing of time? How are the homes we live in a reflection of the people who inhabit them? How can we read a painting to piece together the life of the artist?

The Body as Archive · The Self as Myth

The Body as Archive · The Self as Myth

A Conversation with Artist SHEREE HOVSEPIAN

I am navigating the complexities of identity and subjectivity through the lens of embodiment, archival processes, and the interplay of the indexical and the unknown. My work is deeply informed by the dichotomy of the body as an archive—where the physical exists distinct from the psyche—allowing me to explore the physicality of experience and primordial desire.

Pierre Huyghe: Variants

Pierre Huyghe: Variants

Pierre Huyghe’s Variants (2021—) does not occupy space; it perpetuates it. The work takes as its foundation a complete 3D scan and model of a small island at the bend of the Randselva River in Norway. Biologists and surveyors then furnished this model with quantitative and qualitative measurements of the island’s organic and inorganic elements, such as the types of species, the water levels, the trash, and the sounds and smells. Biochemical and physical sensors are installed around the island to track the shifts in the island’s environment and funnel them into an artificial neural network, which generates from all collected data a continuously evolving and mutating simulation of the island, unfolding in real time on the large LED screen at the far end of the island.

 Adrian Ghenie: Shadow Paintings

Adrian Ghenie: Shadow Paintings

“Once you leave the traditional constraints of anatomy behind, the way you deform can become a portrait of character or the inner psyche on a deeper level. This play with the human form marked the beginning of something new.” Renowned Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie is currently presenting two exhibitions at the Albertina and the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett. Working with a variety of materials and subjects, Ghenie explores the personal, the political, and the art historical, fusing these discourses into expressive abstract and figurative works of art across multiple mediums.

JONATHAN YEO

JONATHAN YEO

Artist

What are you trying to do with a portrait? On a basic level, you're trying to communicate something about the essence of who someone is. You're trying to figure out who they are, not necessarily who they present themselves as. The two things can quite often be different. You're trying to find ways of showing that through their face, their posture, or any other context. My instinct is always to try to reduce down to the essential elements. We read faces. It's obviously very, very deep in our DNA, really our survival instinct. We are programmed to read faces in a very fine-tuned way.

Colony of Ghosts

Colony of Ghosts

CELIA PAUL at Victoria Miro Gallery, London
March 14th to April 17, 2025

My young self and I— we are the same person. I can stretch out my old hand— with its age spots— and hold my young unblemished hand.

ERIC FISCHL

ERIC FISCHL

Artist

The whole thing is to get them to feel like no matter where their background is from, the difficulty they have in their personal lives, the isolation that they feel in relationship to that, that within the art community they are embraced, they are welcomed. All they have to do is just keep getting better at it, but the community is there. I think that something we're all looking for is where we belong.