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THIS SYNTHETIC MOMENT: Curated by David Hartt,

January 18 - March 10, 2018

THIS SYNTHETIC MOMENT: Curated by David Hartt

Past exhibition
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • PRESS
  • Artist
  • Overview
    THIS SYNTHETIC MOMENT, Curated by David Hartt

    LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR · JAMES BARNOR · KWAME BRATHWAITE · DAVID HARTT · ZOE LEONARD · CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS

     
    David Nolan Gallery is pleased to present This Synthetic Moment, curated by David Hartt, on view January 18 through March 10, 2018. 
     
    A picture of one woman looking at another, a portrait of a man holding a camera, a portrait of several women in a schoolyard, a picture of a dancer recumbent, and a picture of several ships. 
     
    A crisis of borders, a fold in time, a rupture in space. An assertion of gradience. 
     
    I was having a hard time describing how I was feeling and then Thomas said "synthetic" and it stuck in my mind. I wanted something porous, a polymeric structure where the voice, agency, geography, and temporality of others collude to produce a more compelling version of the world.  Brixton, Los Angeles, Accra, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, etc., spinning a new distributed off-axis center. 
     
    I was having a hard time describing what I was seeing. So I'll show you instead.  Pictures of power and pride and grief and desire and confusion and community and celebration and abandonment and of a wandering itinerant solitude.
     
    I want to hold all of these things together in this synthetic moment.
     
    The exhibition brings together a disparate group of artists who use photography almost as a will to power, an assertion of their own positionality.  A compound description of the world as vast and contingent. 
    -- David Hartt, 2017
     
    Centering around contemporary photographic practices, the exhibition includes work by Liz Johnson Artur, James Barnor, Kwame Brathwaite, David Hartt, Zoe Leonard, and Christopher Williams. Bringing together, in Hartt's words, "pictures of power and pride and grief and desire and confusion and community and celebration and abandonment" the exhibition reflects on a current global phenomenon, which the curator characterises as "a crisis of borders."
     
    For nearly 30 years, London-based Liz Johnson Artur (b. 1964, Bulgaria) has been preoccupied with the photographic representation of people of African descent. By her own account, she "started taking these pictures because [she] wanted to meet, see and hear people." Johnson Artur's frequent travels have put her in contact with communities across the globe, a fact that is mirrored in her multifarious approach which eschews a fixed geographical and temporal positioning.

    James Barnor's (b. 1929, Ghana) photographs reflect societies in transition. Barnor documented cultures in transformation and new identities emerging first in post-war Britain, where the artist chronicled London as it developed into a multicultural metropolis during the 1960s, and subsequently in post-colonial Ghana, where he returned in 1970. Having mastered color photography in Britain through the Agfa studios, Barnor was instrumental in setting up color processing facilities in Ghana that transformed color photography in Africa.
     
    Kwame Brathwaite (b. 1938, New York) is artist and activist based in New York City. In the 1950s and '60s he - along with his older brother, Elombe Brath - popularised the phrase "Black is Beautiful." Through photography, Brathwaite was able to disseminate new political ideas and his images appeared frequently on flyers and in magazines. His carefully crafted photographs highlight the beauty of his subjects as well as their culturally specific hairstyles and dress.

    David Hartt's works in the exhibition come from his 2014 series "Interval" in which he travelled to two isolated areas of the world: Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon and Sakhalin Island, a Russian territory at the tip of the Japanese archipelago. The three photographs featured in the exhibition come from the artist's Russian exploration. In selecting Sakhalin, Hartt retraced Anton Chekhov's 1890 visit to the remote penal colony island, which followed a difficult journey across Siberia, ultimately resulting in The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin.

    Like Chekhov, Hartt's interest in marginal geographic locations and their communities is critical in deepening his understanding of how human beings function in society.

    Zoe Leonard (b. 1961, New York) uses seriality, subtle changes of perspective, and observation to draw us into an awareness of the meanings behind otherwise familiar images or objects. Her contribution to the present exhibition is entitled One Woman Looking at Another (1990) and presents a highly-nuanced sequence of gazes: the woman being looked at, in turn looks back at the viewer, while both are observed by a host of photographers.

    Christopher Williams's (b. 1956, Los Angeles) work is a critical investigation of the medium of photography and more broadly the vicissitudes of industrial culture, in particular its structures of representation and classification. His images of Mustafa Kinte from 2008 (of which two variants are presented in the current exhibition) function as homages to Marcel Broodthaers's appearance in 1971 advertisement for Van Laack shirts, where the artist was portrayed as the pitchman.
     
    David Hartt (b. 1967, Montréal) lives and works in Philadelphia where he is Assistant Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Graham Foundation, Chicago; The Art Institute of Chicago; LAXART, Los Angeles; and Or Gallery, Vancouver. Additionally, his work has been included in several group exhibitions including Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015 at The Museum of Modern Art, America Is Hard to See at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Shine a light/Surgir de l'ombre: Canadian Biennial at the National Gallery of Canada. His work is in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
  • Installation Views
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    • Kwame Brathwaite Untitled (Photo shoot at a school for one of the many modeling groups who had begun to embrace natural hairstyles in the 1960s), c. 1966, printed 2017 archival pigment print 15 x 15 in 38.1 x 38.1 cm
      Kwame Brathwaite
      Untitled (Photo shoot at a school for one of the many modeling groups who had begun to embrace natural hairstyles in the 1960s), c. 1966, printed 2017
      archival pigment print
      15 x 15 in
      38.1 x 38.1 cm
    • Kwame Brathwaite Untitled (Garvey Day at Renaissance Casino Ballroom), c. 1966 archival pigment print, printed 2017 15 x 15 in 38.1 x 38.1 cm 2 AP
      Kwame Brathwaite
      Untitled (Garvey Day at Renaissance Casino Ballroom), c. 1966
      archival pigment print, printed 2017
      15 x 15 in
      38.1 x 38.1 cm
      2 AP
    • Kwame Brathwaite Untitled (Self Portrait), 1964, printed 2017 archival pigment print 30 x 30 in 76.2 x 76.2 cm 2 AP
      Kwame Brathwaite
      Untitled (Self Portrait), 1964, printed 2017
      archival pigment print
      30 x 30 in
      76.2 x 76.2 cm
      2 AP
    • Kwame Brathwaite Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs), 1968, printed 2017 archival pigment print 30 x 30 in 76.2 x 76.2 cm 2 AP
      Kwame Brathwaite
      Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs), 1968, printed 2017
      archival pigment print
      30 x 30 in
      76.2 x 76.2 cm
      2 AP
    • James Barnor AGIP Calendar Model, 1974 Lambda print 27 3/5 x 27 3/5 in 70 x 70 cm
      James Barnor
      AGIP Calendar Model, 1974
      Lambda print
      27 3/5 x 27 3/5 in
      70 x 70 cm
    • James Barnor Model with Tank and Driver, 1974 Lambda print 27 3/5 x 27 3/5 in 70 x 70 cm
      James Barnor
      Model with Tank and Driver, 1974
      Lambda print
      27 3/5 x 27 3/5 in
      70 x 70 cm
    • James Barnor NIFA NIFA, 1974 Lambda print 27 3/5 x 27 3/5 in 70 x 70 cm
      James Barnor
      NIFA NIFA, 1974
      Lambda print
      27 3/5 x 27 3/5 in
      70 x 70 cm
    • James Barnor Ghanian Model, Medway College of Art, 1963 Lambda print 26 3/4 x 21 5/8 in 68 x 55 cm
      James Barnor
      Ghanian Model, Medway College of Art, 1963
      Lambda print
      26 3/4 x 21 5/8 in
      68 x 55 cm
    • Christopher Williams Mustafa Kinte (Gambia)Shirt: Van Laack Shirt Kent 6441061 Mönchengladbach, GermanyDirk Schaper Studio, Berlin, July 20th, 2007, 2008 gelatin silver print 20 x 16 in 50.8 x 40.6 cm
      Christopher Williams
      Mustafa Kinte (Gambia)Shirt: Van Laack Shirt Kent 6441061 Mönchengladbach, GermanyDirk Schaper Studio, Berlin, July 20th, 2007, 2008
      gelatin silver print
      20 x 16 in
      50.8 x 40.6 cm
    • Christopher Williams Mustafa Kinte (Gambia)Camera: Makina 67 506347Plaubel Feinmechanik und Optik GmbHBorsigallee 3760388 Frankfurt am Main, GermanyShirt: Van Laack Shirt Kent 6441061 Mönchengladbach, GermanyDirk Schaper Studio, BerlinJuly 20, 2007, 2008 gelatin silver print 20 x 16 in 50.8 x 40.6 cm
      Christopher Williams
      Mustafa Kinte (Gambia)Camera: Makina 67 506347Plaubel Feinmechanik und Optik GmbHBorsigallee 3760388 Frankfurt am Main, GermanyShirt: Van Laack Shirt Kent 6441061 Mönchengladbach, GermanyDirk Schaper Studio, BerlinJuly 20, 2007, 2008
      gelatin silver print
      20 x 16 in
      50.8 x 40.6 cm
    • Zoe Leonard One Woman Looking at Another, 1990 gelatin silver print 36 3/4 x 25 1/4 in 93.3 x 64.1 cm
      Zoe Leonard
      One Woman Looking at Another, 1990
      gelatin silver print
      36 3/4 x 25 1/4 in
      93.3 x 64.1 cm
    • David Hartt Interval I, 2014 archival pigment print mounted to Dibond and framed 36 x 54 in (91.4 x 137.2 cm) Edition of 6, with 1 AP
      David Hartt
      Interval I, 2014
      archival pigment print mounted to Dibond and framed
      36 x 54 in (91.4 x 137.2 cm)
      Edition of 6, with 1 AP
    • David Hartt Interval IV, 2014 archival pigment print mounted to Dibond and framed 36 x 54 in 91.4 x 137.2 cm Edition of 6, with 1 AP
      David Hartt
      Interval IV, 2014
      archival pigment print mounted to Dibond and framed
      36 x 54 in
      91.4 x 137.2 cm
      Edition of 6, with 1 AP
    • David Hartt Interval XIII, 2014 archival pigment print mounted to Dibond and framed 50 1/2 x 36 in 128.3 x 91.4 cm Edition of 6, with 1 AP
      David Hartt
      Interval XIII, 2014
      archival pigment print mounted to Dibond and framed
      50 1/2 x 36 in
      128.3 x 91.4 cm
      Edition of 6, with 1 AP
    • Liz Johnson Artur Untitled (Prints), 1992-2015 14 photographic prints (various techniques) dimensions vary; overall 26 x 77 1/4 in (66 x 196.2 cm)
      Liz Johnson Artur
      Untitled (Prints), 1992-2015
      14 photographic prints (various techniques)
      dimensions vary; overall 26 x 77 1/4 in (66 x 196.2 cm)
    • Liz Johnson Artur Untitled, 2016, printed 2018 adhesive vinyl print dimensions vary upon installation
      Liz Johnson Artur
      Untitled, 2016, printed 2018
      adhesive vinyl print
      dimensions vary upon installation
    • Liz Johnson Artur Untitled (Sketchbook), 1993-2015 11 photographic prints (various techniques) dimensions vary; overall 24 x 55 in (61 x 139.7 cm)
      Liz Johnson Artur
      Untitled (Sketchbook), 1993-2015
      11 photographic prints (various techniques)
      dimensions vary; overall 24 x 55 in (61 x 139.7 cm)
    • Liz Johnson Artur Untitled, 2016 digital video (19.35 min.) 2 AP
      Liz Johnson Artur
      Untitled, 2016
      digital video (19.35 min.)
      2 AP
  • PRESS

    • News

      The Photo Exhibition Holding Things Together In "This Synthetic Moment"

      Miss Rosen · Feature Shoot April 23, 2018
      Though we may obsess about the past or the future, alternately consumed by all that is not, the primacy of the present forever asserts itself. We almost always believe that...
    • News

      Group Show: ‘This Synthetic Moment’ at David Nolan Gallery, New York

      Blouin ArtInfo March 7, 2018
      Closing this week is a hard-hitting group exhibition curated and featuring the works of David Hartt. David Nolan Gallery is hosting Hartt and five other artists, as they explore migration...
    • News

      A Photographic Meditation on Time

      Morgan Sykes · NY Mag: The Cut March 4, 2018
      For “ This Synthetic Moment,” curator David Hartt presents photographs whose shared imperative is an interrogation of what he refers to as “a crisis of borders.” Through pictures — including...
    • News

      Black is Brilliant

      Oluremi C. Onabanjo · Aperture March 1, 2018
      From Accra to Harlem, the photographs in an exhibition curated by David Hartt expand the field of representation. What are the images that encapsulate the moments, spaces, communities, and myriad...
    • News

      What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week: 'This Synthetic Moment'

      Will Heinrich · The New York Times February 21, 2018
      ‘This Synthetic Moment’ Through March 10. David Nolan, 527 West 29th Street, Manhattan; 212-925-6190, davidnolangallery.com . The three photos of his own that David Hartt included in “This Synthetic Moment,”...
  • Artist
    • DAVID HARTT

      DAVID HARTT

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