Arno Rafael Minkkinen Retrospective,
“SAGA“, Starts International Five-Year Tour
For More Information:
Please see FEPs website
Contact FEP director Todd Brandow
tbrandow [at] fep-paris.org
33 1 43 38 35 78
The Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (FEP) announces that its exhibition, SAGA: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Thirty-Five Years of Photographs, will begin its five year traveling exhibition tour, beginning in Europe, after recently concluding its inaugural presentation at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, on January 8, 2006.
Among SAGA’s upcoming European venues are the Retretti Art Centre, Finland; the Palazzo Magnani, Italy; the Contemporary Art Museum, Rumania; the Central European House of Photography, Slovakia; and the Budapest Gallery, Hungary. In the fall of 2008 SAGA will begin its North American tour at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canada. That tour will continue through the end of 2010. Tours of Japan, China, and Latin America are also under consideration.
There are openings still available in SAGA’s five- year itinerary which enable other institutions to add this exciting exhibition to their programs. [ For information on scheduling the time periods that remain available, please send inquiries to the email address below.]
SAGA is a mid-career retrospective and serves as the first comprehensive, large-scale overview of Arno Rafael Minkkinens influential imagery of the past thirty five years. SAGA functions as an epic journey both a physical adventure in the natural and urban world and a psychological voyage of the lone human spirit. At the same time, it documents the artists often high-risk physical adventures in his pursuit of memorable images.
The show is comprised of 120 gelatin-silver prints (108 20″ x 24″ prints; plus 12 40 x 60 prints that introduce the chapters of the show). SAGA’s curators, A. D. Coleman and Todd Brandow, have chosen a distinctive mix of iconic images, including lesser-known pieces, previously unpublished work and new works created since 2000.
A comprehensive SAGA catalogue has been published in English by Chronicle Books to accompany the exhibition. A special limited edition of the SAGA catalogue (250) is also available; included is an original signed gelatin-silver print, chosen from among five of the artists most important images.
The catalogue reproductions are superbly rendered tritone plates, in keeping with the quality of the original prints. The catalogue contains new essays by the artist himself, and photography critic and historian A. D. Coleman has written the main catalogue text, with supplemental essays by physicist and novelist Alan Lightman (Einsteins Dreams) and distinguished art critic Arthur C. Danto. Negotiations for editions in other languages are currently under way. Those interested should contact Todd Brandow of the FEP.
Critical acclaim greeted SAGA’s debut, with Grace Glueck of the New York Times stating that, Although Minkkinen’s work is inevitably seen as part of the conceptual mode of body photography practiced by artists like Lucas Samaras, Bruce Nauman, John Coplans and Vito Acconci, it has a wizardry that defies categorization. The Boston Globes Mark Feeney wrote: Minkkinen disappears in his own body … There’s something almost mystical in such dissolution of identity, an exaltation that goes beyond the merely aesthetic. Minkkinens celebrated oeuvre, initiated shortly before the advent of postmodernism, has sustained its importance in contemporary art and photography including performance art and body art, the construction of identity, and the male nude.
The SAGA tour has been organized under the auspices of the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (FEP), an American not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to mounting museum-quality photography exhibitions on a global basis.
For More Information: Please see FEPs website, www.fep-paris.org,. Contact FEP director Todd Brandow via email at tbrandow@fep-paris.org or by phone at 33 1 43 38 35 78
