NEW YORK, NY.- Hasted Kraeutler announced their inaugural exhibition of work by Awol Erizku, beginning June 14 and running through July 20, 2012.
Awol Erizku's photographs reference classical art works to include models of color in order to emphasize, and draw attention to the lack of racial diversity represented in art history. Erizku creates images such as, Girl with a Bamboo Earring, 2009 in which he replaces Johannes Vermeer's Dutch sitter, in Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) with a contemporary African-American woman. Growing up in the Bronx, "the negativity that went on in my community made me want to paint a positive image of the people who might not necessarily fit the stereotype. Going to a school that didn't necessarily reflect the kind of people I lived around and grew up with also made me want to make images that best represented the people I saw on a day to day basis but weren't glorified in pop culture."
Erizku's portraits are of non-professional models, who he finds on the subway, on the street, and on the internet by way of blogs and Facebook. "The models I choose to work with are not professional models but possess an undeniable, striking beauty." Often his subjects inspire him to create a work such as in Lady With a Pitbull, 2009 where the model photographed with her own dog inspired him to recreate Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with Ermine (c. 1489–1490).
Born in Ethiopia in 1988, Awol Erizku is a Cooper Union School of Art alumni, photographer, filmmaker, and sculptor. His exhibition debut in New York City was in the critically acclaimed exhibition, Art² which placed his work alongside Duane Michals, Roe Ethridge, Richard Prince, and Roy Lichtenstein at the Flag Foundation in 2011.
The gallery also announced Great Photographs : Scape, the gallery's third annual Great Photographs of the 20th Century exhibition. This recurring program is an opportunity for collectors and the public to view important, rare, and vintage photographs that would usually be restricted to a museum setting. For the first time, this year's curation will also include works by some of the most influential contemporary artists working today.
Scape, explores the surrealist landscape, works dealing with the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur, often hyperreal. The exhibition will include iconic contemporary examples of the genre, such as Clifford Ross' epic photograph of monumental, Mountain XIII, 2006, and James Casebere's, Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #8, 2010, a fictional landscape of a bucolic neighborhood in exaggerated colors. Meanwhile, Patrick Jacobs' meticulously hand assembled miniature circular dioramas which depict desolate and subtle scenes, such as in, Dandelion Cluster #2, 2010, redefine the idea of landscape.
Scape, explores various artists' interpretation of the classic subject of landscape over the centuries and will feature some of the earliest landscape photographs, created by William Henry Jackson, who was commissioned to document the scenery along the railroad routes and in national parks in the late 1800's. Also included are images by masters of photography, Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Abbas Kiarostami, & Koyo Okada.
