Masters & Pelavin presents a solo exhibition of recent work by Swiss artist, Jean-Paul Cattin. The show will include large scale photographic prints mounted behind plexiglass and will be accompanied by a full color publication. This will be Cattin’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, and in New York City.
Jean-Paul Cattin was born in Geneva in 1964 and currently lives and works between Geneva, Switzerland and New York, United States. A celebrated contemporary photographer, Cattin is best known for his large-scale highly detailed abstract photographs of walls, floors, garbage trucks and other terrestrial materials. His imagery, often originating in cosmopolitan settings—urban elements taken from the places the artist explores—are laboriously worked in post-production and often contrasted to the extreme. The artist’s photographs have a strong emphasis on the organic and poetic, which distills the essence of the photographic moment—a flash of light on a sensitized surface—emphasizes themes of transformation and perception. Cattin seeks not to describe an object with the detailed clarity of traditional photography, but rather in ghostly manifestations of light and shadow. Using a digital camera with a very high resolution (sixty million pixels) Cattin is able to produce extremely detailed prints that borrow from the strategies of fashion, commercial, and advertising photography. He cradles intimate, complex subjects—fear, nostalgia, memory, loss—in images of notable size and simplicity.
As with much of Cattin’s past work, this exhibition at Masters & Pelavin exists between documentary and staged photography, like a type of fictionalized documentary. The basis for this show derives from photographs taken within an abandoned and forgotten motel situated on the border of a highway close to Geneva, Switzerland. In the seventies and eighties, Motel de Founex was populated by “night-owls” and young tourists enjoying evening long parties. Since then, the building has fallen into disrepair and decrepitude. Cattin moves his images beyond the simple “straight photography” style, now so often used to document such urban decay. With great precision, and in a manner similar to photographer Edward Weston, Cattin presents his viewers with close-up photographs of the motels desolate, inhospitable interiors. To reveal an essence of what lies before his lens, Cattin redefines the codes of documentary photography by digitally reinterpreting each picture in a totally abstract and graphical manner. The results of Cattin’s post-production are reminiscent of the abstract paintings of Pierre Soulages and Gerhard Richter.
OPENING RECEPTION 15 September, 2011 from 6 to 8pm
Viewing 15 September – 29 October 2011
Tuesday – Saturday, 11AM – 6PM
MASTERS&PELAVIN 13 Jay Street New York, NY 10013
http://masterspelavin.com/current/
Image: Motel de Founex, 2011, photographic print 60 X 90 inches.
