Sherrie Levine by Dylan Stone
October 17 – November 18, 2002
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
526 W. 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
T: 212.243.3335
F: 212.243.1059
Image : Dylan Stone, Intérieur d’un employé aux magasins du Louvre Rue St Jacques, 2002
Opening reception, Thursday October 17, 6 – 8 pm
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery is pleased to present Sherrie Levine By Dylan Stone; the exhibition will open on October 17 and run through November 18, 2002.
Dylan Stones project to reconstruct in miniature the photographs of Eugene Atget taken at the turn of the Twentieth Century was first inspired by a piece done by Sherrie Levine at Paula Cooper Gallery in 1997, where Levine appropriated Atgets photographs and exhibited them in delicate walnut frames. Taken with the sentimentality of this installation Stone decided to once again reinvent Atgets interiors. Using Atgets original book titled Intérieurs Parisiens Début du Vingtième Siècle Artistiques Pittoresques et Bourgeois, Stone set out to reassemble these interiors within the confines of a shoebox. While the boxes vary in shape and size, each interior measures exactly 8 inches high and depicts in three dimensions the exact contents of Atget’s photographs down to the smallest inlay of wood. Stone brings these black and white photographs to life by using bits of vividly colored paper he has collected since his childhood. The artist has titled each of his boxes, once completed, exactly as Atget titled his photographs. The interiors are identified by the owner of the apartments profession; thus protecting the owners identity while alluding to his or her social stature. Void of human form, these empty spaces serve as a pedestal for the objects of both the wealthy and the working class, signifying the architectural and decorative style of the era.
Ironically, for the past six months Stone has been living in London in a mansion (decorated in the same 19th century style as Atgets Parisian interiors) acting as caretaker for the estate while constructing his shoeboxes. He describes how sentimental objects are shifted from room to room within the house to make space for new gifts and art; the artist directly parallels this pattern of rearranging to Atgets manipulation of the interiors he was photographing. Stone embraces the absurdity of his task. Yet he is compelled to continue, thereby elevating the romantic over the sensible: reconstructing these antiquated objects in all their glorious and desperate sentimentality.
This is not the first large project that Stone has taken on, nor is it the first time he has demonstrated an interest in the architecture of 19th century France. In 1998, Stone presented an installation titled Wont You Come and See My Master Drawings where he built a full-scale French sitting room, complete with decorative moldings and detailed mantle-pieces. In 2000, Stone presented a project at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, titled Drugstore Photographs or a Trip Along the Yangtze River, where he photographed every building on every block on the tip of Manhattan (below 14th Street) with a point and shoot camera. The entire project has since been purchased and in the collection of the New York Public Library.
For more information please contact the gallery at:
212.243.3335 or email: gallery@nicoleklagsbrun.com
