Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new photographs by Swiss artist Thomas Flechtner. The exhibition will open on January 10, 2003 and will continue through February 8, 2003. The opening reception will take place at the gallery on January 10 from 6 to 8 pm.
Thomas Flechtner is an artist whose primary interest is snow, an appropriate subject for a Swiss native. He makes large-scale photographs that are visually spellbinding and laced with the history of conceptual performance based art and earth works of the 1970s . For Flechtner, snow is an ultimate metaphor for timelessness, stillness and loneliness. The photographs are filled with color despite the familiar white of snow. Flechtner achieves this effect with his use of light and very long exposure. They are not digitally conceived or enhanced by computer process.
This show will present images from four series: Walks which are 86 x 76” color photographs that reveal patterns made by the artist as he walked for hours through the snow wearing snow shoes, (and for the night-time shots, an electric light attached to his ankle) documenting his path in the terrain with only the use of long film exposure; Passes which are 69 x 55” and 49 x 40” color photographs of snow enveloping man-made structures high up in the mountains; Colder which are 39 x 31” color photographs mostly of nocturnal images of the snow-covered Swiss city of La Chaux de Fonds (the home of architect Le Corbusier and considered the coldest part of Switzerland); and Frozen which are 53 x 46” color photographs of the frozen still waters around Greenland and Iceland.
While Flechtner has shown extensively in Europe, this will be his first exhibition in the United States. His book, “Snow” was published by Lars Muller in 2001.