EXHIBITIONS
KEN FANDELL, Part I: The Most Important Picture Ever
IMAGES | BIOGRAPHY | PRESS RELEASE
February 29 - April 12, 2008
TONY WIGHT GALLERY is pleased to present the first installment of a two-part exhibition by Brooklyn and Chicago-based artist Ken Fandell, his fourth solo project with the gallery. Part 1: The Most Important Picture Ever is comprised of a 10-minute animated video, a doubled appropriated photographic image, and a photograph of a quotation in a sketchbook. Each element is part of an ongoing contemplation of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a million-second-long exposure announced by astronomers in 2004 that offers “the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind”. The existence of this image serves as a platform for Fandell’s continued engagement with the disorienting psychological effects of considering the quotidian alongside the grandeur of time and space.
Central to Fandell’s exhibition is an animated video titled The Most Important Picture Ever. An amalgamation of a coincidence based on Google image search results for “most important picture,” an image from the artist’s archive, and a manipulated version of an iconic rock song, this piece clarifies Fandell’s interest in bridging the space between the personal and the epic, or what he refers to as “the proximate and the infinite.” Using an animation technique called “shape tweening,” Fandell breaks one image apart, causing the pieces to scatter and form a new image, which in turn fragments and reforms the first image. Part 1 is a double photographic image that shows the Hubble Ultra Deep Field doubling, suggesting the beginning of the expansion of the universe (or the possibility of parallel universes). A second photograph, Order and Structure were Just Beginning to Emerge, extends Fandell’s investigation of the conceptual possibilities of appropriated language and typography by drawing from a NASA press release and the artist’s handwriting.
KEN FANDELL (American, b. 1971) has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Defining Moments in Photography, 1967-2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, (Chicago, IL); In Words: The Art of Language at The University of Delaware (Newark, DE); Antennae at the Houston Center for Photography (Houston, TX). His work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art, New York and is currently hanging in the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He has received awards from Artadia and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Upcoming exhibitions include Time is of the Essence: Contemporary Landscape at the Asheville Art Museum (Asheville, NC) and Part II: Over and Over Until it Doesn’t Matter (Almost) at Tony Wight Gallery.