Craigie Horsfield

We are pleased to announce the exhibition of Craigie Horsfield, in which we will show twenty new photographic works in color and black and white.

Craigie Horsfield is known for his extraordinary black and white photographs and for the epic film El Hierro Conversation shown at the last Documenta and the Whitney Biennal. Since 2003 he is making color photographs and printing them with the new technique called “dry print”. Dry prints are modified ink-jet prints, in this case printed on drawing paper. The works are the result of a long and complex process, sometimes developed over many years. The color is of great intensity and depth, giving the represented objects an almost disquieting presence.

The exhibition is conceived as shifting between anxiety and contemplation, having at its fulcrum a group of portraits taken from the film Horsfield has made in New York in the weeks following 9/11, that will be shown at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in January 2006.

The works are concerned with attention and distraction, disquiet and quiescence. The images oscillate between portraits in motion and images of objects and landscapes that require an extended time frame. They are the result of reflections on the central themes of Horsfield’s artistic production: the slow passing of time, history and the present, narrative and the portrait. Tranquility is conceived as a beloved period of the present, a slow time for attention and contemplation. The simplicity of the images is deceptive: in so far as they are reflections on the state of being and representation, on the method and the materials, these works imply small shifts in attention that have big consequences of meaning. As in the previous black and white photographs, the surfaces are fragile and tenacious and the signs of repeated actions and slow disintegration are omnipresent. To these continual structural shifts are added parallel historical tales of anxiety and tranquility, both familiar and foreign at the same time, that take us back to our own experiences, to the art of the past and to literature.

Born in Cambridge, Great Britain, in 1949, Craigie Horsfield studied at St.Martin’s School, London, from 1967 to 1971. He was among the first young artists to change over to photography, sensing the potential of representation not only of reality, but also of emotions. In keeping with his Socialist convictions, he lived in Cracow, Poland, from 1972 to 1979. During this period he created photographs that underlined the role of the individual in the history and culture of a place; the present was perceived as a moment that lasts in time, that contains both past and future. Hordfield started to print them in large only after his return to London in 1980. In 1987 his work was discovered by Jean-Francois Chevrier and James Lingwood, who invited him to participate in the exhibition Another Objectivity (Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris and Museo Pecci, Prato, 1989), together with photographer artists Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall and others. There followed the personal exhibitions at the ICA, London, in 1991, at the Stedelijk, Amsterdam, the Kunsthalle, Zurich in 1992, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 1993 and the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh in 1994. Since 1993, Horsfield has sought to blend his artistic perception with social reality, and has executed projects that explore the theme of the relationship between the individual and collectivity. His works are the product of the collaboration and involvement of other people as well as the use of various mediums: not only photography but also film, video, performance and sound installations. Among these projects we recall Barcelona: La Ciutad de la Gent (1993-1995), The Rotterdam Conversation: City and Community (1997-1998), Brussels Summer (2000) and El Hierro Conversation (2001-2002). The museum Jeu de Paume, Paris, is preparing a retrospective of Craigie Horsfield’s work for January 2006.

The works of Craigie Horsfield have been exhibited and acquired by leading European and American museums. He participated in Documenta Kassel in both 1997 and 2002.

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Craigie Horsfield