Open 12 February – 8 March 2010 Opening reception Friday, 12 February, 6-8 pm
The Baldwin Gallery is pleased to present its fifth show with Doug and Mike Starn. Identical twins who work collaboratively, the Starns are internationally recognized for their transcendent photography.
They have now enlarged the scope of their work to include installation with their Big Bambu project that began in 2008: a network of more than 2,500 fresh-cut 30-40 foot long bamboo poles lashed together. The Baldwin Gallery exhibition offers a keyhole view of this seminal architectural installation through various scale photographic archival inkjet prints and videos that the artist shot on site at Big Bambu. The artists took 250 images to record Big Bambu, using a 128-lens camera in a grid format and stitched them together to create lustrous photographic works that reflect the magnitude and complex nature of this installation. Big Bambu, a continuous work in progress, is “like an organism,” says Doug Starn. “It’s a reflection of what it is to grow, change and develop anything – a person, family, a city.”
The Starns, who often work with layered, digitally altered photographic material will also show several distinct bodies of recent work, including: the alleverythingthatisyou series, the spectacular body of work entitled Structure of Thought, and unique four-color carbon prints. In the alleverythingthatisyou series, snowflakes in northern Vermont and upstate New York were photographed using a microscopic lens that records each snow crystal in the few seconds between landing and melting. The Structure of Thought series comprises of beautifully textured compositions of trees, branches and vines printed with dense black inks on sections of translucent mulberry paper. Also being shown are the carbon prints of Shi-Tenno and Manjushri where the Starn brothers mingle gilding techniques to the painterly photo process to create photographs of Buddhist statuary.
Doug and Mike Starns’ art has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. Major artworks by the Starns are represented in public and private collections including: The Museum of Modern Art (NYC); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, (NYC); The Jewish Museum, (NYC); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC); The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC); Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; La Bibliotèque Nationale, Paris; La Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, amongst many others.
The public is invited to meet the artists at the opening reception on February 12th from 6-8 pm.
www.baldwingallery.com
Image: Doug + Mike Starn BB 10/19/09-90632