Since the 1980s, British-born artist Adam Fuss has reconsidered the devices traditionally utilized in the pursuit of making a photograph. Fuss constructs his photographs without the use of a camera. After 160 years the photogram technique is still seen as an oddity, yet it is a unique method towards producing images that radiate a curious living presence. Stealing a bit of anima from the objects placed on the paper, photograms often capture an aspect of reality often inaccessible by more traditional means. Fuss extends the cameraless tradition first explored by photography’s pioneers William Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins, and later mined by artists of the 1920s such as Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy, and Christian Schad, subverting the primacy of the camera and celebrating the print as an independent object.
A group of fifteen photograms will debut alongside Fuss’s series of Sunflowers. Fuss continues to explore metaphorically the issues of death and life, beauty and decay. Ranging in size from 11×14 inches to more than five feet in height, the photograms visually fall into a strange netherworld of description somewhere between realism and abstraction.
Adam Fuss has exhibited internationally, and his work has been the subject of recent articles in Artforum and Aperture magazines. His photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art among other public institutions.
This exhibition is concurrent with Robert Adams: Early Works, 1968-1974
