Art Blog

The Painted Photograph

Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography: 5 May to 19 November 2006

David Bierk Petrified Tree, California 1989 Oil on photographs on canvas 133.4 x 91.4 cm Collection of Elizabeth Bierk Photo: Michael Cullen, Trent Photographics

This exhibition presents the beautiful works of David Bierk, Sarah Nind, and Jaclyn Shoub that mix photography and painting. Their use of both media expresses contemporary concerns about the relationship between ideas of nature and culture, originality and appropriation, and tradition and modernity. Sarah Nind understands the photograph as an accurate, albeit static, reproduction of reality, one that must be augmented in order to convey ideas of a more spiritual nature. In the work of Jaclyn Shoub, painterly processes provide a way to intervene with imagery in order to create a more personal statement about the subject matter. The anxiety and sense of loss linked to technology is explored in the work of David Bierk. By incorporating direct references to art history and painting, Bierk offers the viewer a sense of tradition and lasting cultural values. The photograph, as a modern technology and image-making device, therefore, is in direct dialogue with its pictorial antecedents. ...

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