Silver Eye Center for Photography brings Wonderland to Pittsburgh with two stunning exhibitions by Maggie Taylor and Abelardo Morell
PITTSBURGH, Pa. – The Silver Eye Center for Photography is pleased to present exhibitions this summer by two of the most renowned and influential photographers working today – Maggie Taylor and Abelardo Morell – each highlighting a singular reinterpretation of the 150-year-old story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
These Strange Adventures: The Art of Maggie Taylor on view at Silver Eye’s South Side Venue beginning May 14, 2010.
Maggie Taylor first exhibited her work at Silver Eye in 1995, and today, she is internationally recognized as one of the most inventive and accomplished artists working with cutting-edge digital imaging processes. This exhibition features 40 of Taylor’s photo montages created from 2003 to 2009. The centerpiece is a selection of 23 works from Almost Alice: New Illustrations of Wonderland, a three-year project published to great acclaim by Modernbook Editions in 2008.
Since 1996, Maggie Taylor has been using the most advanced digital image-making tools in place of the camera and darkroom to create her fantastical work. Starting with objects that she finds on eBay or in flea markets such as old Victorian photographic portraits, Taylor scans and assembles a single image from dozens upon dozens of Photoshop layers.
- These strange adventures. 2006 © Maggie Taylor
“A single work may take months of experimentation and careful thought to complete and Taylor’s artistry is, in short, nothing less than virtuosic,” comments Ellen Fleurov, curator of the exhibition and Silver Eye’s executive director. “Yet, what makes Taylor truly great is not just her technical mastery but the rich interplay between photographic veracity and illusion, the psychological tension between dreams and reality, which seems to stand at the heart of her deeply affecting and beautiful work.”
These Strange Adventures: The Art of Maggie Taylor will be on view from May 14 through August 21, 2010 at the Silver Eye Center for Photography at 1015 East Carson Street in Pittsburgh’s South Side. Admission is free and open to the public.
The exhibition is made possible, in part, through support from the BNY Mellon Audience Development Fund. Media sponsors are WYEP 91.3FM and Pittsburgh City Paper.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Photographs by Abelardo Morell opens May 7 in the Cultural District as part of Three Rivers Arts Festival
Abelardo Morell’s rethinking of the Lewis Carroll classic precedes Maggie Taylor’s series by a decade and the fifteen images in the suite will be on view from May 7 through June 25, 2010 at the 709 Penn Gallery in downtown Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. The exhibition is organized by the Silver Eye Center for Photography and presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Education and Community Engagement Department in association with the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Admission is free and open to the public.
Abelardo Morell’s interest in the Alice story is not surprising for he has long been intrigued by the magical qualities of books and their enduring presence in our memory and history. To make his images, Morell created paper cut-outs from the original Sir John Tenniel illustrations to Alice in Wonderland and then arranged the figures into carefully constructed scenarios. These mis-en-scenes were then photographed from a variety of often disorienting perspectives with a large format view camera. The resulting images brim with a wit, delight and punning imagination that Lewis Carroll himself, a pioneering photographer, would have relished.
It’s always tea-time. 2006 © Maggie Taylor
ABOUT MAGGIE TAYLOR
Maggie Taylor was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1961. She received her BA degree in philosophy from Yale University and her MFA degree in photography from the University of Florida. After more than ten years as a still-life photographer, she began to use the computer to create her images in 1996. Her work is featured in Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, Peachpit Press, Berkeley, 2005; Solutions Beginning with A, Modernbook Editions, Palo Alto, 2007; and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Modernbook Editions, Palo Alto, 2008. Taylor’s images have been exhibited in one-person exhibitions throughout the U.S. and abroad and are in numerous public and private collections, including The Art Museum, Princeton University; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and The Museum of Photography, Seoul. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband Jerry Uelsmann.
ABOUT ABELARDO MORELL
Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1948 and moved with his family from Cuba to New York City at age 14. He was introduced to photography at Bowdoin College in Maine and received an MFA from Yale in 1981. In 1983, he began teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston where he is now a Professor of Photography. He has received a number of awards and grants, which include a Cintas grant in 1992, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994 and a Rappaport Prize in 2006.
His work has been collected and shown in many galleries, institutions and museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and The Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Major books on the artist include: Abelardo Morell, Phaidon Press, 2005; Camera Obscura, Bulfinch Press, 2004; A Book of Books, Bulfinch Press, 2002; Abelardo Morell and The Camera Eye, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, 1999; and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, photo-illustrations by Abelardo Morell and introduction by Leonard S. Marcus, Dutton Children’s Books, 1998.
ABOUT SILVER EYE
For the past 30 years, the Silver Eye Center for Photography has played a unique and valued role in the region’s cultural landscape and earned a national reputation as one of the country’s pre-eminent photography centers. Our mission is to advance understanding, appreciation and active engagement with photography as a vital form of creative expression and as an educative force in communicating the diverse values, histories and issues that shape and influence our lives.
Silver Eye Center for Photography is generously supported by the Allegheny Regional Asset District, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Fine Foundation, The Grable Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation, The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation, The Henry John Simonds Foundation and Anonymous.
ABOUT THREE RIVERS ARTS FESTIVAL
June 4 -13, 2010, Downtown Pittsburgh
Point State Park, Hertz Gateway Center & locations throughout the Cultural District
A division of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Three Rivers Arts Festival is a 10-day free celebration of the arts held annually in Downtown Pittsburgh. Each year, the Festival features nightly live music concerts at Point State Park; an Artists Market featuring original art and fine crafts; gallery exhibitions throughout the Cultural District featuring top Pittsburgh-based artists and exhibitions from around the country; and hands-on activities for kids and adults alike. Demonstrating the convergence of art, the environment and technology, Three Rivers Arts Festival is a national leader in environmentally-conscious event production and at 10 days long, is among the largest and longest-running free arts events in the country, welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.
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